


under pressure precious things can break

by nagia



Series: O Tower Not Ivory [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Domestic fic shading into ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, F/M, Kid Fic, Trigger Warning: Drug Addiction, trigger warning: drug use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 17:26:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 39,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3577821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, when we seek to change our fates, we change the world. Or: Cullen learns Apprentice Surana is to be forced through the Rite of Tranquility.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. out

He supposes he has Gar to thank, were he inclined to thank anyone. And Cullen has to admit that though he regrets the way matters came to an end, there was too much brightness to regret those days. No few of them were among the best of his life.

That, at least, is the end.

It begins, depending on how one reckons, with either the arrival of a nameless, dark-skinned, blond neonate — or with the night the boy came seeking him out, a scant week before Sens would have turned nineteen.

* * *

LATE SUMMER, 9:28 DRAGON

The boy arrived in the night, with a pair of Templars all the way from Denerim. They were Chantry guardians,not mage hunters, but claimed he'd given them no trouble, particularly not after they'd fed him. The boy's eyes, a remarkable grass green, had been dull and deep-sunken in a face that was unnaturally narrow, with hollow cheeks.

His wrists had been thin as blank vellum. It still burns, to remember how near the child — later, _his_ child — had come to starving. It burns worse, to remember the blank, uncomprehending stare in response to "What's your name?"

"We called him Garris," one of the Chantry Templars said. "He looks a little like a Garris I knew once."

The other grunted, "Find a new name for ‘im. That one's ill-omened."

The first Templar snapped, in response, "He didn't _die_." He sounded exasperated, as if they'd had this conversation more than once, and very recently. It's a three days' walk from Denerim, and that's marching hard. With a child — and this even if they carried him, which he hopes they did — it could take twice as long. Cullen has no doubt they'd repeated many conversations.

"Not what I heard, and even if he didn't, he came right close enough."

"Enough," Knight-Commander Greagoir said. "I can scarce believe a pair of Templars from the Grand Cleric's own Chantry would repeat such superstitions. Garris will serve as a name, if the boy doesn't mind?"

But the little blond child — an elf, Cullen realized, when he saw the curved upsweep of the ears, easily as pronounced as Sens's — just stared and said nothing.

It was First Enchanter Irving who suggested "Garahel." He said it with a glint in his eye, like he expected — or hoped — that it would somehow pain Greagoir. Cullen never had been able to fathom the odd mixture of friends and enemies the First Enchanter and the Knight-Commander made, nor ever would. For all they sniped, for all they argued, for all they constantly strove to inconvenience the other, they had weekly chess games and took their meals together.

But Greagoir only raised an eyebrow, and so First Enchanter Irving added, "Let the boy have a name of his people; it's close enough to what he's already been called."

They all looked to the boy. He looked back at them. When Greagoir asked him, a little softer, "Would you like to be called Garahel?" he seemed to think a moment before giving a slow nod.

"That settles it," the First Enchanter said. "Garahel it is. Welcome to the Circle of Magi, child."

Rather than thank anyone, Garahel nodded again, likely too young and neglected to know better, and then gave a yawn that was surely bigger than he was. Greagoir looked to Cullen, and Cullen nodded. After all, neonates were his responsibility, now.

Garahel was the slightest of weights in Cullen's arms as he lifted him, easily, to his hip. The way Gar immediately tucked his cheek against Cullen's breastplate, uncaring of the cold metal, both startled him and warmed something in his heart.

"I'll take him to Apprentice Surana," Cullen told the others. "She should be with the crèche at this hour."

* * *

Watching Garahel and Sens meet is one of the memories that, to this day, both swells his heart and tears at it.

He could see that Sens had taken one look at the boy and decided he was hers, in much the same way Cullen had. And yet Gar had shyly ducked his head against Cullen, clinging tightly. Sens had understood, or seemed to.

"I'm Apprentice Surana," she told him, reaching out to brush a stray curl from his face and then gently, gently trace one of his ears. "But you can call me Sens. I was going to take the other children to the kitchen for their bedtime snack. Would you like to go with us?"

Gar was clearly wavering, but he still made no answer save to cling to Cullen.

Sens waited for a moment, before adding, in the same soft, soothing, strangely delicate tones, "We're having shortbread and milk. Have you ever had shortbread before?"

Gar shook his head.

"Then would you like to come in the kitchen and try it? If you're sleepy or scared you'll get lost, I can carry you."

Gar clung just as fiercely to Sens as he had to Cullen, as if frightened that if he didn't hold on, he would be torn away. Cullen couldn't help but wonder what the boy had been through, how close he'd come to starving. Just how had he been found by the Templars, and under what circumstances would a child who'd gone so hungry for so long use magic?

But those were all questions for later, or possibly never.

Garahel looked back to Cullen as Sens carried him away. His green eyes glinted greener in the darkness, huge in his frail face. Sens turned her head only once, looking back at Cullen over her shoulder, her own eyes equally green, glowing almost like a cat's.

They could have been mother and son. Something in Cullen's chest — surely not his heart, surely he wasn't so great a fool as that — squeezed at the sight of them, walking away from him, down gray corridors. He ignored it, though, and instead nodded to Gar, trying silently to tell him that yes, this would be home now, and it would be a good one. That Cullen would watch over him.

* * *

As the days and weeks passed, Garahel grew healthier. His wrists and face thickened, while his hunger-swollen belly thinned. The curls that had hung limp and dull became a wild, brassy shock, an unruly, eye-catching mass that glinted beneath candle and torchlight. It could be nearly blinding if he stood beneath a window.

Within the month, he was apple-cheeked and about as round as any elf ever got. Even his ears changed a little. They filled in, looking thicker and healthier than the ragged dagger-points they’d been. They were still prominent, as long as Sens’s, swept back and slightly away from his head.

And the boy learned the trick of making those huge ears droop when he pouted. Thankfully, if Sens or the other elf children could do the same, they never did so in front of Cullen. He didn’t need a reputation for being weak-willed.

Of all the changes, the only one Cullen didn’t like was the way Garahel’s skin lightened. Like Sens, he didn’t take on the milk-pale coloring of many of the other Circle mages, but without constant access to sunlight, the boy’s skin was a sallower, weaker hue. He was still about a shade darker than Sens – but she’d had almost eleven years to lose her color.

Months turned into a season. Garahel’s actual personality began to appear: almost always earnest, by turns grave or curious. He was into damn near everything, trying to fix things or help. He failed more than he succeeded at that goal, and Sens – quietly, where the children couldn’t hear – worried at his difficulty in reading, though she was equally quietly proud of his aptitude for sums.

Sums, Cullen could see, were concrete for the boy. Well, the basic sort of arithmetic, anyway. There were four apples or there weren’t, and he could see them, and he could see how the written number represented the quantity. He didn’t seem quite as easy with words, spoken or written, unless he was asking well-intentioned questions.

“He’s not going to study much theory, I don’t think,” Cullen said one evening as Garahel slowly forced his way through one of the crèche’s primers, with long pauses as he made himself stop to sound words out.

Sens’s reply, when it came, was, “Magic starts with theory.” She didn’t really _sound_ unsettled or disturbed, but then, she rarely did. Especially not in the presence of the neonates.

* * *

Nightmares were common in neonates. Entering the crèche and helping the children calm down from them, talk about them, eventually banish them: this was part of the task he and Sens shared in tending to the neonates. It was no surprise that a child with as troubled a past as Garahel had would have worse nightmares, and they would continue for more than the first month.

Sens herself never raised the issue with Cullen. Perhaps she thought they would taper off – though, judging by the way the Templars stationed near the crèche at night spoke, they showed no sign of diminishing. Perhaps she saw it as her burden, or an issue she was best equipped to handle.

Still, despite their expectations, Garahel’s nightmares never abated. And, after the First Enchanter caught Sens “resting her eyes” in an ancient Tevinter tome of considerable value, Cullen stepped in to share the burden.

If Garahel had a nightmare and needed to speak to one of them, he could go to Sens – or he could also speak to one of the Templars on duty, who would find a way to fetch Cullen. He didn’t even have to explain why.

“What I need you not to do,” Cullen told Garahel, kneeling and looking the boy in the eye, words and voice sober, “is go _only_ to Sens. She is not the only one who cares for you, and she has much she must do. It will be easier on all three of us if she and I both help you.”

* * *

Those words, a few months later, were why he even learned of the first matter. Were why he would travel from Redcliffe south and east, into Lothering. His decision to halve the burden of caring for a four year old was why he became inextricably linked with the Grey Wardens.

But he cannot deny, either, that those words brought a year of brightness into his life. That the decision gave him a son.

* * *

EARLY SPRING, 9:29 DRAGON

Eight months after Garahel’s arrival, shortly after they’d decided that the boy had most likely turned four in the winter just passed, Cullen found himself roused from sleep by an impatient-looking lady Templar. She looked bed-rumpled despite being in full armor, and for a moment, he had no idea where he was, or who _she_ was, or even why a woman would be glaring at him while the moon rose in the window behind her.

“That elf boy is looking for you again,” she snapped.

Cullen rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles, just barely recalling that he was in Kinloch Hold. But at the mention of a boy, the world snapped back into place. “Garahel,” he said. “I’ll go down to him.”

“See that you do,” Evelyn told him, voice short. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve an actual patrol to walk.”

Cullen had taken to sleeping with his arming coat nearby and his armor laid ready, so armoring took only a few short minutes. The longest process was the right strap, which he had to affix with his off-hand. He didn’t stop to grab his greatsword as he left his bunk, an oversight Greagoir would surely chastise him for.

He found Garahel in the hall just below the Templar Quarters. The boy had curled into a chair, with his knees up against his chest. Someone had laid a fire in the hearth; it and the pinprick stars beyond the tall, arching windows cast soft flickers of light and shadow onto his face. In that play of seen and unseen, Garahel looked like some forest creature from a fairy story, both older and younger than his yet tender years.

“Gar?” Cullen asked, softly. “Was it your mother again?”

Garahel looked up. “I don’t know. A girl's hand. The cobblestones. She was dragging me. I never saw her face.”

The same dream. Cullen had always suspected that the woman dragging Gar through Denerim, to deposit him roughly before the Chantry and then turn around and leave, without ever once saying a word to him, had been his mother. 

If, indeed, this nightmare was how Gar had come to the attention of the Templars — the way he’d been on the brink of starvation suggested otherwise to Sens.

Children were precious to elves, she always said. No elven woman would let her son starve, no matter what she had to do to put bread in his mouth. Nor would she cast him aside to the Templars without a word.

"Let's get you back to bed," he told Gar. There was no comfort, not truly, in telling him that what happened in the dream would never happen again.

After all, all it meant was that he would never leave the Tower.

Gar's hand was small in his as he walked the neonate back to the crèche. Cullen was careful to take small steps, so the boy could keep up.

There was no resisting the urge to pat Gar's brassy curls as Cullen helped him back into bed, making sure to pull the covers up and tuck them close around him.

"I want a lullaby," Gar said, soft and sleepy, as Cullen gave him one final gentle pat and stood to leave.

Cullen cast a practiced eye around the crèche. Several of the neonates were only feigning sleep, apparently waiting eagerly for Cullen to sing to them. One of the things few knew about Templar training was that it involved almost as much vocal training as a mage's did: where mages were taught to sing to improve their elocution in spells, Templars learned as a mixture of endurance conditioning, entertainment, and religious instruction. Templars serving in Chantries rather than in Circles or as apostate hunters needed to serve any number of purposes, from security to Chanter, and as such, needed to be word and note perfect on at least the Chant of Light as well as the more common hymns.

The neonates had no idea of this, of course. No one had told them — nor ever would — that Denerim, Val Royeaux, and Starkhaven all hosted choirs entirely of Templars. They only knew that Ser Cullen could sing, and enjoyed the sound. 

Truth be told, Cullen liked turning a voice trained to exalt the Maker in exquisite song to the folk tunes and lullabies sung in the hills near Honnleath. He served the Chantry and the Maker, could imagine no better life, but music by the people, for the people — wasn't that what Andraste herself had sung, at first, and won the Maker's ear?

Cullen suppressed an amused smile as he pretended to give in under duress. "I suppose, Gar, since you appear to have woken the others. What shall I sing? Shall I lull you all to sleep with the Chant?"

"No," eight voices chorused sleepily. One of them — Cullen tried not to mark which — begged, " _Please_ don't, Ser Cully!"

Six other children immediately smothered the offender in a cacophony of hisses and shushing, in clear fear that such a protest might make him obstinate. And, had any of the Chant of Light been at all appropriate to use as a lullabye, it might well have. He'd made his opinion on _that_ ridiculous shortname quite clear some time ago.

Cullen bit the inside of his cheek to stop an amused smile. He waited a few moments, before settling at the foot of Gar's bed, and then murmured, "Well, my mother used to sing me to sleep with this song. Will the Red Rose do?" At the obedient, pleased nods, he cast his voice low and began to croon, "Come over the hills, my bonny, bonny lass…"

At least two of the children had nodded off by the time he reached the final, "But my love is fairer than any," still in that same soft, slow voice. Another three had heavy-lidded eyes, and he'd have to turn to see the rest.

Even Gar looked tired, but Gar'd had a night.

Still, as Cullen smoothed his hair away from his face, behind those prominent, pointed, too-large ears, Gar stirred and asked, "Do you think of Mama Sens when you sing that?"

Cullen stilled.

"I always do," Gar added, and then turned onto his side and closed his eyes. 

There was no need to come up with an answer, then. No need to find some lie to explain the way his voice — despite what he'd learned of vocal control — always turned wistful on the chorus. Thank the Maker for small favors.

He was not, of course, in love with Apprentice Surana. There were rumors to the contrary, because this was the Circle and those not presently engaged with studying magic had little better to do than sing or talk, but they were false.

The problem was, they were false by only the barest of margins. Cullen Rutherford did not love Sens Surana — but he very easily could have. If they'd met any other way, if she'd been a lay sister or one of the folk of Redcliffe, if she'd been anybody but a mage, maybe even a mage if she simply hadn't been one of his charges —

If he was honest with himself, he was teetering on the edge between truly maddening infatuation and something real.

But what use dwelling on feelings he couldn't acknowledge, much less act upon? Cullen shut the door to the crèche and turned himself, resolutely, toward the second floor. He had to report the night-time disturbance to both the First Enchanter and to Knight-Commander Greagoir, and at this hour, he suspected he'd find them both in the First Enchanter's office.

His armor was light enough, and he was moving slowly enough in his utter lack of desire to speak to the Knight-Commander after being informed that his inadvisable feelings for a mage were so obvious that even children asked about them, that he made almost no noise. He heard the raised voices before he reached the doorway, and stopped.

It was generally best to let the First Enchanter and the Knight-Commander argue it out. And of course their arguments were not only entertaining but informative.

"I'm not suggesting this out of any personal dislike, Irving," Greagoir was saying.

The First Enchanter rasped, almost sulky, "Except you don't like her."

"How I feel about her is irrelevant. I think even you will acknowledge that she's dangerously powerful, and I _don't_ think we need another Anders. Nor do we need a second Uldred. Maker knows she has the potential to be far more subversive than Uldred, and far more of an irritation than Anders. And there's this report —"

"You take his escape attempts so personally." Irving sounded faintly amused by the prospect.

"Of course I take it personally! He's made fools of my men six separate times. But Anders isn't under discussion right now; Sens is. Is his the fate you want for her? He's been six months in confinement, and has some time yet."

Sens? They were talking about Sens? Almost as if his feet had their own will, Cullen moved forward, as silently as he could. He tilted his head to listen.

"How can you call Tranquility a better fate, particularly when your only evidence is a report I doubt?" There was a pause, and then, softer, Irving said, "You know she would beg for execution."

"I have executed apprentices her age and younger, and with as much reason. If she _requests_ an execution rather than Tranquility, I would have no qualms granting it."

As if Greagoir hadn't made his answer, Irving continued: "And don't think for a second that Tranquility would spay her. It might remove the passion from her hatred, but the openly anti-Andrastian sentiments she espouses come from her intellect, not only her feelings. Can you imagine a Tranquil pointing out that she's been virtually enslaved by the very organization that kidnapped her as a child? Constantly?"

"We'll have to transfer her. Maker, Irving, how did you ever let this grow to be such a mess? Was it sentiment, or did you just want another mage who could bring enough raw power to bear to send any but a veteran Templar running for cover?"

"Give me a week to talk to her. The new responsibilities have softened her, made her less vocal in her hatred of the Circle, so the children won't hear. She may yet be saved."

"A week. But then I expect you to either Harrow her immediately or sign the bloody writ, Irving, or I'll have no choice but to brand her a maleficar. Considering Uldred's remarks, her connections amongst your apprentices — and the hold she has over one of my own knights — it could well be true."

There was silence, then. Cullen could imagine the First Enchanter bowing his head. Not in true acquiescence — such was not in his nature — but he’d at least ceded the argument.

Cullen let out a sigh, as quietly as he could. He felt as though his head must be spinning. Surely, if he stepped forward, the world would tilt and reel, as it did shortly after his doses of lyrium? But the world stayed put and his vision stayed solid as he forced himself to move more quickly, more loudly to the open door.

“Knight-Commander Greagoir,” he said, saluting. Then he gave a nod to the First Enchanter. “First Enchanter Irving.”

The First Enchanter’s eyes were sharp on him, measuring. Calculating. Sens had much the same way of looking out at the world, though the First Enchanter’s expression was always patient and grave with a touch of impassivity. Sens simply wore her face like a professional mask. The eerie similarities between the two, and the way the First Enchanter always seemed to be thinking five steps ahead, had always made Cullen uncomfortable.

Greagoir raised a brow, looking mildly concerned. “Ser Cullen? Are you ill? You’re not scheduled for duty at this hour, that I recall.”

“What?” He felt his face respond with surprise and dismay. Maker, to be so open with his thoughts, on tonight of all nights? “No, no. Simply tired. And no, I’m — I was off duty, ser.”

“Young Garahel has had another nightmare.” It was a statement of fact, not a question.

“Yes, First Enchanter.”

“And interrupted the sleep of one of my knights. Again.” Greagoir sighed. “Another we may have to transfer.”

Transfer Garahel? Maker’s breath, was Kinloch Hold to send away or destroy every mage he — everything he enjoyed here? Cullen said, quickly, “It wouldn’t stop the problem, ser, just shift it onto another Circle and their Templars. It might even make it worse.”

“The Templars of another Circle are not my responsibility,” Greagoir told him, not unkindly. He was more firm as he added, “You are. And if you’re in armor, why aren’t you carrying your sword?”

How could this man — kind, if grim; fair, if stern; concerned for his men and the mages in his charge — be the one to order Sens rendered Tranquil? Greagoir had always been good to the mages of Kinloch Hold, hadn’t he? Always just?

She must deserve it. And yet this thought was insane. He could not make himself believe it.

“Honestly, ser, I don’t know. I was half sleeping; armor must have seemed more important,” Cullen said. He waited a moment, furrowed his brow and prayed he wasn’t overacting as he asked, “Who else must the Circle transfer?”

Greagoir said, as easily and simply as breathing, “One of the apprentices. No one of great concern to you. You’d best return to your quarters; I’ll not waive morning assembly for you over a child’s nightmare.”

* * *

The world seemed unreal as Cullen returned to the Templar quarters. The walls swam before his eyes and he could not shake the feeling that none of this was happening. Had he stepped into some maleficar’s trap and entered the Fade, unwitting and unwilling?

But no, this was no hallucination. What nightmare but reality?

The thought of Sens with the sun brand, bright on her dark skin, made him feel queasy. He imagined the glittering green eyes, hawk-fierce, going dull and unconcerned, and the nausea roiled up from his gut into his throat. She would forever wear her face in the impassive mask he’d spent his days in the Tower trying to see behind.

Gone would be the self-assured apprentice of considerable power and intellect and a startling streak of gentleness. And in her place would stand —

Cullen swallowed bile, bitter and hot, burning his throat like the cravings if he left his lyrium ration for late.

Almost worse, Greagoir had lied to him. No one of great concern? How could Greagoir possibly believe that Cullen — that _anyone_ — would be unmoved by the sudden Tranquility of a person they worked closely with?

How could Greagoir suggest sending away a frightened and traumatized child, simply because he was having trouble adjusting?

In a daze, he stripped his armor and laid it on the stand. Everything to its proper place. 

And yet, even after he crawled into bed, heavy as his eyelids grew, he could not sleep. The thought of Garahel being torn from the first family he’d likely ever known, once again dragged to a strange place by uncaring hands, haunted him, as did the thought of a young mage who’d done no wrong, not truly, being punished with virtual slavery.

* * *

He was twitchy during muster the following morning. Knight-Captain Hadley frowned thoughtfully at him as he relayed orders, and Carroll offered a few grains left over from his “latest” dose. Not, of course, that any Templar was capable of such restraint with his lyrium ration; Carroll had just tacitly admitted to having a source on the side.

Cullen ignored Hadley, as best he could, and declined Carroll’s offer. He wasn’t entirely sure that was wise — even the thought of having it made him want it so badly his blood shook in his veins — but he didn’t dare. Greagoir had no tolerance for lyrium addling.

Carroll’s continued existence was something of a miracle.

After his patrol, he skipped the dining hall and went, instead, to the Chantry. There, he knelt and began to recite the Chant of Light, starting with the very first of it: the Canticle of Andraste. The whole Chant would take weeks, of course, and he’d been taught to recite in a slow, easy-to-follow plainspeak that meant he wouldn’t even venture into Benedictions after a single night.

Still, just saying the words gave him a sense of calm, a sense of quiet, and he was able to let his mind wander. Something must be done. He knew that.

He just couldn’t seem to decide _what_.

He was on the seventh verse — _Those who oppose thee / shall know the wrath of Heaven. Field and forest shall burn / the seas shall rise and devour them_ — when he realized there was somebody standing behind him. Not a fellow knight, or he'd have heard the creak of leather and the soft chime of mail or plate. Not the initiate, because she would have joined him in recitation.

So, the priest, then?

Cullen kept going until he'd reached a natural stopping place — _They shall cry out to their false gods / and know silence_ — and then asked, without turning or looking up, "Yes, Mother Brigid?"

A man chuckled. It was a low, dry, scraping sound, and though Cullen had never heard it before, he knew it in an instant.

Not the Revered Mother.

"First Enchanter Irving," Cullen said. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear armor, so I simply assumed —"

"Your faith does you credit, young knight," the First Enchanter said. "And I suppose one body moving in heavy robes sounds much the same as another."

"Ah…" Cullen didn't know what to say to that. He rubbed at the back of his neck, feeling awkward. What did a simple knight say to the First Enchanter of the Circle he guarded? "Thank you?"

The First Enchanter laughed again, a sound that thrummed from deep in his chest. "Although I must admit, it has been some time since I saw a younger Templar kneeling before the Maker, without one of the Vigils to hold."

"I find it peaceful," Cullen said. It was only true. Just truth, and nothing more.

"Do you have reason to seek out peace, now? Does something trouble you?" A pause, careful, and then, there was that calculating look back in his eye. "You are Ser Cullen, yes? Sens speaks highly of you."

Oh, Maker, five words he hadn't known he'd longed to hear. He could feel his face moving, sketching out a portrait of surprise and pleasure. "S-she does? I — I didn't think — I mean I thought, well, it doesn't matter what I thought."

"She says that if our new arrivals must learn to be watched by Templars, you are the best to teach them. Always reminding them that you serve both: not protecting them from outside, or outside from them, but shielding both, and from the truer threat, as well. Reminding them that they dwell still in Andraste's love."

"I doubt Sen — I mean I doubt Apprentice Surana had much kind to say about _that_."

"She does not share our faith, true, but she would not take it from those who need it. She does not need to believe in Andraste to believe that you are shield and shepherd to those most afraid."

"Shield and shepherd?" Cullen asked, thinking of cold spring nights up in the hills near Honnleath, carrying lambs on his shoulders. "Not shield and sword?"

"To balance those three must be difficult indeed. You have my sympathies, young Templar."

Almost certain that he was really saying something else, Cullen said, quietly, "Being any of the three is easy enough. I was taught to it. It's harder to know which to be, and when. When it's best to be sword — or shepherd."

"I take it that is why you sought refuge in the Chant, rather than taking your meal with your fellows, tonight? I am glad you have such solace, for these choices, I am sorry to say, do not grow any easier as you grow older."

"Do you… have any advice, for such choices?"

The First Enchanter gave him a slow smile, half lost in his beard. "Only to listen. What does your faith tell you, Ser Cullen? Must you choose violence and death? Will you protect something? Or will you guide your flock and keep them safe from harm? Not even I can answer those questions for you — _you_ must decide all of this."

"Who is my flock?" Cullen asked, quieter, because they were indeed having two conversations at once.

"I cannot answer that."

Cullen almost asked again, but he knew that the First Enchanter wouldn't answer. And the First Enchanter was right: he needed to decide who his flock was for himself. The world at large? The Circle to which he had been assigned? Or… something smaller? Something to which he belonged, and belonged also to him?

"No," Cullen said. "I suppose you can't. But I thank you for your advice, First Enchanter."

The First Enchanter only nodded, grave. "And I thank you for listening to an old man's ramblings." His voice went a touch dry as he added, "Perhaps you will join me for a chess match tonight?"

Cullen let his own mouth curl as he said, "Perhaps."

* * *

Cullen half expected there to be no chess game, when he worked up the courage to enter the First Enchanter's office later that night. But Irving waved him to a table with a board set up. There was a basket of rolls, still warm from the kitchen, their outsides flaky and their insides soft, and a plate of cheese.

At Cullen's expression of surprise, Irving said only, "Consider it an act of enlightened self-interest. It wouldn't do for one of our staunch guardians to fall over in all that armor after he skipped too many meals."

Cullen, seating himself and taking the black pieces, asked, "Guardian, not shepherd?"

That drew a laugh from the First Enchanter. He, too, seated himself. He didn't even consider Cullen, just moved one of his pawns forward in the standard Chain Lightning opening, clearly going for the Scholar's Mate.

Some part of Cullen balked at being so plainly underestimated. Rather than draw it out, he used his first move to neutralize the threat to the space near his king. The First Enchanter raised an eyebrow in response, and the game began in earnest.

They reached the middlegame in their own time, trading a few comments about strategy, but not at all addressing the conversation underneath the one they'd had in the Chantry.

At length, Cullen slid a mage a few spaces — close enough to be a threat, but not to a piece the First Enchanter would have to immediately move to defend — and said, "You already know I overheard what the Knight-Commander plans for Apprentice Surana."

The First Enchanter actually smiled at him, and the beard didn't even cover any of it. "You looked like a man experiencing the Earthquake spell for the first time in his life." He moved a knight, not taking the mage. Still, with that knight so near, using it would be costly.

Which, honestly, was exactly what Cullen had expected, so he moved his chantry.

"That conversation in the Chantry," he said, and had to quirk a small smile. His fingers were still on the piece; he took them off, slow and careful. "You're urging me to action, but there's nothing I can _do_. Ser Greagoir is the Knight-Commander here, not me. I'm not even senior enough to guard the outer door."

Irving raised an eyebrow, but asked only, "Would you, if you could?" He struck out with his knight and took Cullen's chantry.

"You place yourself in check," Cullen said, softly.

Irving looked down at the board, then back up to Cullen. His eyes were just a touch too wide, the surprise feigned. "It would seem I do," he said, sober and grave as he always was, as if this wasn't about just a chess game. He reached out — Cullen thought, at first, he was reaching for his pieces, to right the board — but instead he gripped Cullen's upper arm.

"Would you do something, if you could?" Irving's grasp was so tight, Cullen could feel it through the plates covering his arm.

 _Blessed are the peacekeepers_ , Cullen thought. _Champions of the just._ And what was this, but a grave injustice, harm done where none was needed, a bright life snuffed out before its time, for no reason other than fear?

Could he live with himself if he stayed silent, if he did nothing? If he made no effort at all to save a woman he very well might love?

"If I could," he said as he lifted Irving's knight from the board, "I would, yes." He held it out in offering, and asked, "Why don't you Harrow her?"

Irving's answering chuckle, as he let go Cullen's arm and accepted his knight, was bitter. "The two of you stand at vastly different places in your lives. You, I think, are at the cusp of something real and good. But Sens… Cullen, she dances on the edge of something dark, something very dark indeed."

"Malefaction?" He asked, because he had to, because it was, horribly, a logical conclusion. He counted himself lucky never to have seen its power, but by all accounts, it would make of Sens a force the Templars of the Tower would be hard pressed to stand against. If she knew of Greagoir's plan for her, she might be considering it as her only means of escape.

"No," Irving said, voice sword-sharp and eyes alight with anger. "No one has yet proved Jowan is a maleficar, nor is Sens likely to give the Chantry the _satisfaction_ of being right. But this place is a death sentence for her. Do you know her favorite place in the Tower?"

What did it say about him, a Templar, that he could answer that? "The north window on the third floor." And why did it matter?

"And why does Greagoir try to keep mages away from windows on the third floor?"

"Because they open, and the fall will kill —" Oh. Oh, Maker, was Irving suggesting…? "But she would never do that. Surely…"

"She is losing hope," Irving said, blunt. "Even if I Harrow her, she won't endure long, any longer than a wild animal kept in a cage."

* * *

Matters moved very quickly after that. It all boiled down to three facts: they needed a way out of the Tower. They needed a way not to be found, once they'd left. And they needed a place to go, once they were out. There were other details — such as how they would get to wherever they were going — but those were his principal concerns.

With Irving, he took care of how they might be followed. It was a simple matter, to enter the Phylactery Chamber with the First Enchanter's help; he'd been called to carry apprentice or mage phylacteries, before, and Irving was allowed a key, since it was useless to him without a Templar at his side.

"These," Irving said, retrieving two vials of blood. 

"Those?"

Irving raised an eyebrow. "Surely you didn't plan to take Apprentice Surana, but leave Garahel?"

He hadn't, but he hadn't expected Irving to think through to that. He'd expected to have to ask. Foolish of him to underestimate the First Enchanter.

Even a pace away, Cullen could feel the magic preserving the blood, keeping it fresh, keeping it from drying or going sour. He stretched out a hand, and with a thought, smote the spells. The buzzing on the back of his tongue didn't vanish — he was surrounded by too much magic for that — but it did lessen.

Irving set the vials back where they belonged, and then they both turned and walked from the Chamber.

"Have you given any thought as to how you will leave the Tower?"

"The supply entrance," Cullen said. It would surely be a simple matter to have a boat waiting for them there — the lyrium dealers managed it, in _spite_ of both Knight-Commander Greagoir's and Knight-Captain Hadley's crackdowns, and they spent half their time out of their minds. A word and half his lyrium ration to Carroll, some coin for the smuggler, and it'd be done.

Irving gave a dry chuckle. "Very cloak-and-dagger."

"Is that a bad thing? I doubt the Knight-Commander will simply allow us to walk out the front door."

"Ah, but why wouldn't he let an apprentice soon to be Harrowed venture out onto the island, if she were accompanied by a Templar who must surely be invested in making sure she returns to the Tower?" A pause. "The Knight-Commander need not know that the Templar is accompanying two mages. Garahel is small; easily concealed beneath a heavy cloak."

"Isn't that one of the old tests to see if an apprentice was eligible to be Harrowed?" If Cullen recalled correctly, it was intended to show the Templars that an apprentice could be trusted. So many apprentices had failed, however, that the test had fallen out of use.

Irving's mouth curved for a fleeting moment.

It was ingenious, really. Kester would answer a summons across the water. And, if Sens were accompanied by a Templar, he would take her across without questioning it.

There was only one problem with that plan.

"You… expect me to go with them?" He knew it made sense. They would need him. Some part of him even wanted to go, as well. He couldn't even call himself entirely surprised; he'd been preparing for it from the moment he'd told the First Enchanter he would do something, if he could. Still, it was different to openly contemplate leaving the Tower. Different, to admit aloud that he planned to abandon the duty he'd sworn himself to.

Irving gave him a placid look. "You didn't truly expect otherwise."

After a moment, Cullen sighed, and said, "No, I didn't."

* * *

There were, of course, other matters to arrange, and Cullen did so as best he could on his soonest leave. Templars were permitted a day a week to travel to the Calenhad Docks or two days a week, stacked, to visit Redcliffe, so he traded days with Rickon, a Templar not known for having much to do in the outside world.

It came to pass that four days before Sens would either be Harrowed or — more likely — executed, First Enchanter Irving obtained permission for her to leave the Tower, in a pre-Harrowing exam.

Cullen almost wished he could have been a shadow in the room for that particular conversation between the First Enchanter and the Knight-Commander. As it was, he only found out because Knight-Captain Hadley passed along a new order: in a week's time, he was to take Apprentice Surana to the edge of the island and back, and report on her behavior to the Knight-Commander and the First Enchanter upon their return.

The intervening week passed by in both a blur of underhanded activity and an agonizing crawl. Cullen thought his intentions had been discovered at least once a day, and at least once a day, he held a secret meeting with the First Enchanter while trying to avoid the scrutiny of the Knight-Commander and his Captain.

On the sixth night, the night before this pre-Harrowing, he slipped down to the Infirmary. It was one of the few parts of the Tower that never slept, so he simply tapped on the door and then entered.

One of the healers looked up. At the sight of a Templar, even if he was dressed only in a linen shirt and trousers, the young mage's eyes widened. He looked about him, as if desperate for some other healer to deal with the Templar.

Cullen wasn't particularly practiced in deceiving people. In fact, no small part of him hated even the thought of it. So rather than lie when he approached the healer, he said, "I'm not here on anything official. I simply seek a sleeping draught for a young child."

The healer, still terror stricken, shook his head and pointed wordlessly to a white-haired woman in red and gold robes.

Cullen approached her and repeated his question, with a touch more grace. A Senior Enchanter would be experienced enough to mark his face, to identify him and perhaps comment to the Knight-Commander.

But she knew all about Garahel's troubles sleeping nights, and had most likely heard of the difficulties it caused Sens. The Senior Enchanter gave him a small vial of a white liquid that reminded him vaguely of milk.

"Only half of this a night, mind," she said, softly. "Or he'll sleep well into the next day, and be drowsy even when he wakes."

The vial felt tiny and fragile in his hands. Cullen looked at her, and couldn't keep the earnest concern from his voice. "But his sleep will be dreamless?"

She nodded gravely. "Yes." She paused, wary, and then asked, "You do not believe his night terrors to be the work of demons?"

What? Cullen took a moment to stare blankly. His mind tried to encompass the question, but the sheer madness of the idea made all logic he possessed balk and shy away.

"He's four years old," Cullen said, and hoped his voice didn't sound half as uncomprehending as he felt.

"And you are a Templar, if labels have any bearing on my question or your answer," the Senior Enchanter said.

Ouch. The dig was subtle, but he still saw it. Cullen resolved to ignore it, saying instead, "I believe him to be a traumatized child still adjusting to a major change in his life. Nor do I see how a young mage just barely walking — and who has demonstrated few signs of ability — would be of any real interest to a demon."

The Senior Enchanter gave him a beatific smile, as if he had passed some sort of test. "Go, then. Off with you, and tend your charge."

Cullen went, glad to be gone from the Infirmary. It was a necessary part of the Tower, of course. He did not begrudge it its place. And yet he'd heard stories of why certain parties — almost all of them beautiful young apprentices, rarely older than fifteen or sixteen — were sent there at odd hours. There was least one girl a year, or so the rumors said, and yet the First Enchanter had never demanded a Seeker sent to the Tower. No investigation into the abuses that surely must be happening.

Those were not the thoughts he wanted in his mind when he made his way to the crèche, so he did his best to think of other things.

The Templars did not have guard posts inside the bedrooms, so once he ducked past the knight on patrol, he was entirely unsupervised. He gently shook Garahel awake and tried to ignore the feeling of guilt at disturbing what had been, for once, a peaceful night.

He directed the boy to the privy closet and, once he'd returned, uncapped the vial.

"Drink this, Gar," he said. "I need you to drink all of it."

Garahel blinked up at him sleepily. "What is it, Ser Cullen?" He'd barely spoken before he was yawning, one of his frequent too-big-for-his-skin yawns that stretched his mouth.

"Just something to make sure you don't have any bad dreams tonight," Cullen replied.

Garahel obediently took the draught and drank it all. His mouth didn't even twist at the taste, so it was either easy on the tongue or he'd drunk it too fast to notice. Cullen tucked him in again, pressing the covers tight around the boy, and smoothed the blond curls back from his head.

Against all odds, Garahel had the Rutherford nose, and his apple cheeks reminded Cullen of his own younger brother at that age.

There was a Templar standing outside the door to the crèche when he left.

"Gave the boy a sleeping draught," Cullen said, forcing his voice to be flat, uncaring. Kincaid, he knew, cared little for their charges. Cullen had never been sure why he'd chosen to become a Templar. Perhaps his path had been chosen for him.

Kincaid arched a brow. "You mean I might pass a shift without the brat screaming like he's being murdered? Praise the Maker. Oh, and stop by the north-most window on your way back to the barracks, hey? Surana wanted to discuss the boy with you, and Andraste preserve us if the Circle spitfire doesn't get her way."

"I'll do that," Cullen said, and headed for the upstairs.

He found Sens by the north window on the third floor. There was a torch nearby, and its flickering orange glow cast her alternately in light and shadow. Starlight dusted her skin through the glass window, turned her into some sort of night-time spirit. She had unpinned her hair, and it fell down her back like spilled ink.

When she turned to look at him, he saw that the lack of light had caused her eyes to glow once more, making the grass-green color stand out even more. Even through the glow, they seemed to burn with some emotion Cullen couldn't name.

Maker, he hadn't seen her look this _alive_ in the year he'd known her. How had he not seen what was missing from her?

"Cullen," she whispered. "The First Enchanter says I'm to leave the Tower tomorrow?"

This was the first time he'd ever heard her make an effort to be quiet. She didn't make a habit of raising her voice, but she usually spoke so tonelessly that her soft volume seemed more happenstance than intentional act.

At the same volume, Cullen replied, "And not return. Has the First Enchanter told you of the plan?" Cullen couldn't bring himself to call it the First Enchanter's alone, but nor could he call it his own.

"Yes," she said. "I'm to stop in the crèche tomorrow and hide Garahel in my cloak, then meet you at the Outer Door."

Cullen nodded. "Good. You can do this without being seen?"

Sens arched an eyebrow for a moment before her face returned to its usual mask, save the scorching green gaze. "I can." Her voice was steely, as if Cullen had offended her with his doubt, and she turned back to the window, peering out at the dim shapes of the sky north of the Tower.

"Then you had better rest," he said, gentle as he thought she might accept. "We've a long way to go tomorrow."

Sens looked over her shoulder at him, her expression cool, before she said, "As you say." 

She brushed past him to leave the window behind, close enough that he could catch the scent of her hair or perhaps her skin. It was floral, faintly sweet. He wondered, as she paused near him, if she wore perfume of some kind.

He was too lost in that curiosity to deflect when she leaned into him, stretching up onto the tips of her toes to press her lips against his cheek. Her lips were soft against his skin, and the smell of her was stronger in his nose.

Then she was gone, in a whirl of green and bronze robes and black hair.

Cullen wasn't such a fool as to press his hand to his cheek, where her mouth had been, but he did stare after her in a daze for a time.

* * *

The following morning dawned misty and gray, though warm air seemed to sweep in from over the lake. Though the sun was weak in the sky, its light cast hazy rainbows along the ground through the mist.

Cullen rose early and dressed when no one else was around to see how he shook. The knot in his stomach and the sheer certainty that he would be found out, that this was a trap, a test he had failed, left him buckling, unbuckling, and then re-strapping his cuirass three different times. He almost gave up lacing the thongs of his boots.

He'd already moved what few possessions he dared take to Redcliffe. All he had left was his coinpurse, which he stuffed with a handkerchief to muffle the rattle and then slipped into his shirt, under the arming coat. Best no one saw him do that; most Templars kept their coin in the barracks unless they had town leave, and he didn't need people wondering where he planned to spend.

Next, of course, he broke his fast. He made himself ignore the way his stomach churned with nerves and instead ate heartily, dipping biscuits whole in gravy and drinking honeyed tea. 

He was resolutely tearing a rasher of bacon into small chunks and forcing himself to chew them when Knight-Captain Hadley came to stand just behind his left shoulder. Cullen looked up, trying to seem bleary and unfocused rather than ready to crawl out of his own skin from anticipation and fear.

"The Knight-Commander wants to see you," Hadley said.

Cullen dropped the bacon back onto his plate and stood. With every step, the food in his stomach seemed to weigh heavier. Perhaps the meal had been a bad idea, but surely he would need the strength later.

His knees trembled as he took the stairs.

Hadley closed the door behind them when they reached the Knight-Commander's office.

Cullen saluted on instinct.

"Templar Cullen," Greagoir said. "Knight-Captain Hadley. Are you aware of the pre-Harrowing?"

"Yes, ser," Cullen said. "I am to accompany Apprentice Surana on hers, am I not?"

Greagoir nodded. "Yes. I need you to watch her carefully on this trip. Anything she does or says that seems… unusual to you, or noteworthy, I want you to report to me."

At least most of the plan hadn't changed. Cullen saluted, crossing both arms over his chest with a bow. "Yes, ser."

"Good."

"Do you believe she will fail this test, ser?" Cullen asked the question even as he thought better of it. Still, best to be open and curious, right? Give Greagoir as little reason for suspicion as he could.

Greagoir looked at him for a long moment, assessing. After a silence that seemed to stretch until Cullen felt awkward and foolish, as though he had pried into affairs that didn't concern him, Greagoir closed the logbook he had open at his desk. He leaned forward, steepling his fingers, and looked up at Cullen with dark, serious eyes.

"I am aware of your fondness for her," Greagoir told him, voice as somber as Cullen had ever heard it. "I believe you see somewhat in her that is good — I truly do. But know this, Knight Templar: there is also a potential in her to cause great unrest within this Circle. And I do not believe she has the discipline to resist it."

Knight-Captain Hadley cleared his throat and said, "Even if she passes, Cullen, it's likely you'll be the one to stand ready at her Harrowing."

Maker's breath. Both the Knight-Commander and the Knight-Captain knew of his attachment to her, and were making him responsible for her fate? They knew that he cared for her, and would ask that, should she fail, he _behead_ something wearing her face at her Harrowing?

It was enough to make his head swim. Still, he swallowed his anger and his despair, saluted, and said only, "I serve the Maker and the Chantry. I will do my duty."

The only question was — which was his duty?

He supposed his answer was the way his stomach churned at even the thought of guiding her back through the Outer Door, at depositing her, betrayed and furious, back in the crèche, and then reporting to Greagoir on her every heretical movement and word.

* * *

The half hour he spent at the Outer Door, trading gossip with Bran and Eswin as if nothing was wrong, may well have been the most torturous of his life. There was no denying the frisson of relief that rolled down his spine, the way his entire body relaxed, when Sens finally appeared in a thick dark cloak.

As Bran and Eswin turned and opened the doors, Sens pulled her cowl over her head. Howsoever she was carrying Garahel with her, he was invisible beneath all that cloth. Neither Bran nor Eswin gave any sign they noticed anything wrong.

Cullen stepped out first, then stopped and stood, awaiting Sens.

She walked slowly out of the Tower, as if reluctant to leave a building that, for all she'd called it a prison, had still sheltered her for eleven years. If she was acting, it was a masterful performance; her eyes were wide in her dark face, as if she was torn equally between longing and terror.

"Apprentice Surana," Cullen said, trying to sound stern. He probably just sounded disapproving.

Sens looked slowly around the Tower's entrance, at the ragged weeds and crumbling benches, at the gray horizon and the shore of the lake.

"Oh, pity's sake," Bran muttered. "It's Ferelden, Apprentice. You've been pestering me about it for years. Go look at the trees and the bloody lake or whatever it is you elves like. Maker's breath, do us all a favor and see if you can find a way to soak Cullen in lakewater."

Eswin said, disapproving, "Bran."

" _Without_ drowning him," Bran added, as if that had been the source of Eswin's reproof, and not his entire attitude.

"Apprentice Surana," Cullen said, and tried out a coaxing tone. "You've been asking to leave the Tower for years. There's nothing out here that will harm you."

Sens was shaking, he realized. She was actually trembling as she took first one step away from the doors, and then another.

"Maker shine his gaze on you," Bran said and was echoed by Eswin. As soon as Sens cleared the doors, they heaved them inwards.

The doors slammed shut with a final-sounding cacophony of metal against stone.

Cullen held his hand out, as if the offer would make matters any easier on Sens.

Against all odds, it seemed to, for she reached out and placed her hand in his. Her fingers lay delicately against his palm, slender and dark. Her skin was cool, and unlike him, she hadn't been sweating.

He gently closed his hand around hers, and then tugged her closer. It wasn't a full on pull, just a slow, insistent shift of his weight to tell her that she should come closer to him.

"We haven't much time," he told her as she closed the distance between them. She nodded, grave, and followed silent and obedient when he struck out for the dock. He kept hold of her, though there was no real need.

He lit the signal lantern one-handed. They didn't wait long before the signal lantern on the opposite shore flared to life, and soon enough, Kester was rowing his boat to the island dock. Cullen released his grasp on Sens, then gently pressed his palm against the back of her shoulder.

"Kester," Cullen called across the water. "We'll be needing a ride to the shore."

"Sending the lass on Circle business?" Kester called back, eyeing Sens with surprising wariness.

"Yes," Cullen said. He offered nothing further; if they truly had been on Circle business, it would be none of Kester's.

"Well, in, then," Kester said, and began rowing closer.

Getting Sens into the boat without trying to drown her — or revealing to Kester that she was smuggling a small child — was an ordeal. Cullen had expected to be able to simply hand her down, but Sens set one foot down and clearly panicked at the way the boat rocked under her slight weight. She made no noise, nor even much of an expression, but her eyes widened and she backed away.

Eventually, Cullen perched along the side, then had Sens take his hand as she stepped down. He had to press his palm against her waist and lightly maneuver her — very quickly — away from the boat's edge and into a seat in the center. She trembled again while Cullen shoved himself into position, the weight of his armor rocking the little rowboat from side to side.

Once they were under way, though, she relaxed.

Cullen loosened his breastplate and reached inside his shirt, pulling out his purse. He pried a pair of silver coins from the grasp of the handkerchief, and then offered them to Kester.

"Will this repay you for taking us to the Redcliffe docks?" He asked. "She's been in the Tower ten years; I'd rather not make her walk an entire day."

Kester's gaze had turned wary and speculative, but he didn't question, simply reached out and took the coin. "Save you some travel time on this Circle business?"

Cullen retreated back to the flat, unfriendly Templar persona. Non-Templars seemed to find it easier to believe that the knights resented their charges. "I'm not listening to her complain for a week about the _easiest_ part of a journey to Denerim. Not when I'll have to listen to her complain another week while she corrects the Circle Tower's archiving error, and then complain all the way home."

"She hasn't complained much yet," Kester pointed out.

"She doesn't have blisters yet."

Sens turned her head to look at him, but then she went back to staring at the lake.

Kester fell silent, and after a few minutes of that, Sens spoke.

"I wanted to leap over the edge and drown myself, the last time I was on this boat."

"See to it you don't jump when we return," Cullen said, feigning short temper. "The First Enchanter may not forgive me letting you drown, but the Knight-Commander would absolve me of any guilt."

Kester's gaze on Cullen was sharp, but he ignored the pair of them and rowed back to the Calenhad Docks. There, they disembarked — and Kester tied his boat securely to the dock — in what was almost as bad of an ordeal for Sens. The minute she was off the water, she clung to the nearest support and didn't seem particularly inclined to leave it behind, even as Kester indicated the skiff he took to Redcliffe.

Helping Sens maneuver into that was marginally easier than either entering or exiting the rowboat, if only because it was slightly larger, and didn't bob quite as much when she put her weight on it.

There was no conversation on the sail to Redcliffe. Cullen dared not speak overmuch to Sens, nor would she have had much to say to a Templar who seemed to resent her, and Kester seemed largely uninterested in his passengers. Cullen suspected the only reason they even _were_ passengers was the silver he'd offered. Without that coin, Kester'd have likely laughed, and told him that a mage complaining was a Templar's problem.

Instead of conversing, Kester kept his eyes fixed alternately on the sail and on the choppy water as the wind carried them toward the fishing boats from Redcliffe. They all ignored the good-natured curses the fishermen shouted as they slipped past them and disturbed the water — and thus the fish, or so shouted the fisherfolk — though Sens shifted where she sat, as if deeply uncomfortable.

By afternoon, the skiff crested the stiff, small waves, and Kester was throwing a line to men on the Redcliffe docks. Cullen helped Sens back onto shore, and couldn't help a moment of fond amusement at the way every line of her body eased, her face relaxing into its more usual mask, once she was back on ground more solid.

"Kinloch Hold thanks you for your service," Cullen said with a perfunctory nod.

He pressed the flat of his palm, once again, to Sens's shoulder, and made as if to guide her away. How strange, that an escape he'd spent nearly a fortnight agonizing over should be accomplished so smoothly.


	2. away (part one)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, but just this part of the chapter is _fourteen thousand words_ , so I'm splitting it. Next piece of this chapter will be up in about two weeks, probably. We shall see. I'm shooting for a month, max. Hopefully it'll be no more than 5 to 10k, but uh. We'll see.

Cullen led Sens through the town and up its hills. He had to stop every so often to let her look around. She'd evidently never seen a lake town before, or perhaps had never seen foothills of red clay. She'd certainly never been near a forge before; he was glad of his helm hiding the smile as she spun to stare at it, flinching at the ring of metal on metal.

"A smithy," she said, quietly. "It's... loud."

His smile grew. He suspected it made its way into his voice, though he prayed not. "Did you expect the shaping of metal to be quiet?"

She turned to look at him, then, and he felt a heel. Who was he to mock a woman who had been locked away from the world ere she was ten? But Sens didn't point this out, only let her eyes crinkle with amusement as her mouth softened. It wasn't quite a smile, but he'd yet to see her smile with her whole mouth, and even her half smiles were rare. It was close enough to serve.

"Where next?" She asked.

"The tavern," he told her. "And then out of here."

Her eyes crinkled even more, glinting with suppressed mirth. Had she been a woman given to laughter, or indeed any other woman at all, he'd have thought she was struggling to hold in a chuckle. Her lips made a funny twitching motion, curling up on one side and then returning to neutral, before she finally got her face under control.

Her voice was completely even when she said, as grave as ever she was despite her obvious good humor, "That will be an experience."

Of course. She'd never have been to one. No wonder she was so gleeful.

"Hold on to that humor," he warned her. "There's usually an odor, and at least two… rowdy patrons."

Lloyd's place wasn't usually so bad, since its main source of business came from the castle guards, who were only about in the late day, and the fisherfolk, who came off the water at the truly odd hours. 

It was almost empty today, Cullen saw as he pushed the door open. He nodded to Bella, who was idly moving a washrag over a wood table. Bella nodded back, but then her gaze landed on Sens. He watched Bella's gaze turn appraising, before she resumed her general indifference to everything about the tavern, including everything _in_ the tavern.

He'd mentioned Sens to Bella, he was fairly certain. Possibly more than once, though never by name. Problem was, conversations with Bella usually happened when he was deep in his cups, and were generally followed by either some other patron trying to make free with her time or her person or by Bella pressing him against the door to his rented room, her mouth over his in soft, warm kisses that didn't, truly, mean much to either of them.

If Sens noticed the scrutiny, she said nothing of it. She simply followed Cullen, silent and watchful, as he passed Bella by and headed instead to Lloyd.

"What we talked about, before," Cullen said, softly. "I'll be needing it, now."

Lloyd's eyes drifted from Cullen to Sens. The same appraising look Bella had given her appeared on Lloyd's face, but between what Cullen knew of Lloyd and the deals Irving had helped him broker, Cullen liked that look not at all.

"There's been a complication," Lloyd said, but his gaze never returned from over Cullen's shoulder, as if Sens herself was the issue. He paused — rather telling, in Cullen's opinion — and bit his lip before finally continuing, "It'll be an extra forty silver."

Maker, did the smallfolk think Templars were made of coin?

Sens placed on delicate hand on Cullen's upper arm. Wary, he moved back. Something about her was making the back of his tongue itch, as if he stood in the presence of magic, and when he looked down at her, she was smiling. There were even teeth.

He'd stood ready at four Harrowings in the past year alone, and had even seen an apprentice become an abomination. He felt now as he had in that moment of surreal horror, as bones cracked and muscles shifted and the body rearranged itself. Her smile was every bit as unnatural as the strange geometries of abominated flesh, and dishonest besides.

"Will it?" Sens asked pleasantly.

Lloyd looked down at her, and evidently did not see the danger that Cullen did. "Forty silver. A complication. I said it."

"You assured the First Enchanter there would be no complications," she said, still smiling. There was even a hint of false warmth in her tone. "That would be the First Enchanter of Calenhad Tower, you recall? I was his personal apprentice, because the dead speak to me."

A lie. Told with the ease and comfort of the truth, yes, but the dead did not speak. Never once had any mage summoned a dead person's spirit from the Fade. There were some who doubted that the dead even went there, though where else they should go, Cullen could not guess.

Lloyd swallowed, as if he'd finally sensed the metal trap lying in wait behind her friendly manner. Still, he maintained his composure as he said, "Well wouldn't that be a fine thing, if the dead could talk again. But it isn't so. The Chant says —"

"— the Chant is divine word spoken by mortal lips. It cannot be perfect," she said, mercifully dropping the smile. "And you surely cannot believe the dead would have any kind words for you. Your mother's last bout of rheumatism? The one that left her weeping in her bed before her poor heart gave out? I'm sure you remember. She does."

"Sens," Cullen hissed, but Lloyd had gone pale. She had not fooled Cullen, who knew both that Sens was a heathen and that the dead didn't speak to her, but Lloyd had clearly bought the line. He tried to assure himself this was necessary. What money he had left, he had to save for supplies later. To deal honestly today might mean Garahel went hungry next month — a fact Sens evidently understood all too well — and he tried to force himself to keep sight of that.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" But it was bluster. Cullen could see it was bluster; whatever Irving had told Sens, it was striking every nerve Lloyd had. The man was practically shaking.

Sens arched an eyebrow. "No? You don't remember hearing your mother cry? Not lifting a finger to help her? You hadn't even the spine to end the suffering of the woman who gave you life."

Maker's sake. If Cullen hadn't known for a fact that she was lying through her teeth, he'd have been appalled that she was using magic to threaten someone inconveniencing her. He was still approaching appalled at the vicious falsehoods she was feeding the man, at the way she preyed on his guilt and fear. He wanted to be angry with her

"You didn't even hold your mother's hand, or haul in firewood. She died alone in a little room at the top of the stair, in the dark, and her tears froze on her cheeks. And yet she loves you," Sens said, remorseless and unemotional. "I'd be ashamed I ever bore such a creature as you, as worthless as his wandering father, but she blames herself for failing you, and she's sorry she troubled you in her last days."

"Sens, enough," Cullen said, as Bella turned to stare at the pair of them.

"Maker, enough of that," Lloyd said, voice shaking as hard as he was. He kept his tone low. "If she's telling you this from the — from the Fade or such like, tell her to stop. Tell her I'm sorry."

"The dead don't want apologies." Sens said. "The dead only want the living to love them and act as they should, so they don't have to keep watching us fail them. The dead don't even need me to speak for them. You know what you hear. You know what you must do, to stop hearing it."

"The mule's out back," Lloyd said. "And your supplies are in the back storage room. I'll — I'll go and —"

He hurried away. Cullen stared after him, still more than a little horrified.

"Sens," he said, voice hollow.

Sens looked back over at him, but before she could offer an explanation — if indeed that was her intent — Lloyd returned with two pairs of bags, a pair of straps in each fist. "Foodstuffs in these," he said, nodding to one pair, "and sundries in the other. Bedrolls and a rain screen are with the saddle for the mule."

Cullen nodded. "Thank you. We'll be on our way, then."

* * *

Once he'd found, greeted, and saddled the mule, he rounded on Sens. "What was that?" There was no keeping the sharpness from his tone. A young elven mage using the death of a man's mother against him — knowing something she could never have heard of — would be marked.

"I believe it's called a guilt trip," she replied.

"No, I mean, how did you know all that? I've never heard of a mage speaking to the dead."

"The dead don't speak," Sens replied. "I'm not sure how Irving knew, but he told me about Lloyd's mother, and mentioned that it would be good leverage, should I need it."

Cullen shook his head, resisting the urge to sigh a little. He led Sens away from the tavern, up through the final few hills near the town's exit.

"And the part about his mother not blaming him?" He asked as they passed over a bridge.

Sens was quiet for a very, very long time. She didn't answer until they were at the village gate, and then all she said was, "A boy's mother is the only god he needs, and he needs her to be benevolent."

Cullen stared at her, because what did that even _mean_?

* * *

He let the matter drop, after that. She hadn't threatened a man with magic, and it wasn't as if Lloyd or Bella remembering they'd passed by would be useful to any pursuers. Kester could and would tell any Templar who asked that Cullen had paid him to sail them to Redcliffe.

Still, the incident sat in the pit of his stomach, sour and heavy. He tried to tell himself that survival, in the immediate future, might require any number of unsavory things. He tried to tell himself that helped.

The day chilled as afternoon waned into evening, but Sens voiced no complaint. Indeed, she seemed content simply to be away from the Tower. It might have been novelty, or perhaps constantly having to go up and down the stairs had kept her in something approaching condition. Maker knew taking those stairs at a run, in full plate and carrying sword and shield, had figured into Knight-Captain Hadley's more sadistic constitutionals.

They didn't speak much, once he dropped the Redcliffe incident. Cullen was too busy chasing his own thoughts, trying to decide which of the several plans he'd come up with to use. Nothing seemed particularly wise just now.

Perhaps it would be best to wander a time.

As it was, Cullen kept them walking well after sundown, until he half suspected Sens would collapse if he asked her to take another step. He set up the rain screen alone, mostly because he caught Sens sagging against the mule as if exhausted. But Sens evidently caught her breath enough to lay out bedrolls and identify a good spot for a fire pit.

Maybe this wasn't to his credit, but he'd expected her to be entirely dependent. He made sure to conceal his satisfaction at the unexpected competence — however small it was — and simply surveyed her work.

"Sens," he said after a moment, when he noticed the bedroll placement.

Sens looked over at him, then followed his gaze. She didn't miss a beat as she said, "I expect it to be cold, and I'm unused to sleeping alone."

Well, at least she was frank? Cullen tried to find something to say to that, but he could only splutter.

Sens gave him a blank look, and then said, "I meant I'm used to the neonates crawling into my bunk."

That made rather more sense, he had to admit. It certainly made it easier to stop his spluttering, though he was certain he was as red as if he'd been slapped. He found himself stumbling over an apology for thinking the worst of her.

"I know there were rumors," Sens said. "They don't trouble me."

Of course they didn't. That was Sens all over: self-possessed, supremely confident, and largely uninterested in the political machinations of the Tower. She had never seemed interested in the opinions of her fellow apprentices, instead courting only her mentor's approval. Given her mentor had been the First Enchanter, that came as no surprise.

"You're always so confident," he said, then shook his head. "If you're sure of this, then I am, as well." A pause, as he considered another matter: "And how is Garahel?"

"He's in a natural sleep," Sens said. "He woke earlier, I think, but he fell asleep quickly. It's very dark in the cloak."

Cullen didn't bother trying to repress a smile.

* * *

They had all three of them curled up in the bedrolls within the hour. Cullen tucked Garahel against his side, but lay on his back. Sens seemed less sure of her preferred sleeping position, shifting and changing — and losing heat, he was tempted to point out — until at last she curled toward him and rested her head on his shoulder.

She still smelled of some faint floral scent. There were other scents on her skin, of course, the foremost being sweat, but for some reason the flower smell was what made it easiest to his nose. He still wasn't sure if she perfumed her body, or used some sort of perfumed lather for her hair.

It didn't really matter. Courtesy dictated he ignore it, and he certainly tried.

The more tired he grew, the harder it became to think of this as really happening. It was all so surreal.

"Maker, this is surely some mad dream, and I'll wake tomorrow and none of this will have happened," he muttered to himself.

Sens stirred — setting off a fresh wave of the flower scent — and opened her eyes. They glowed in the dark, cat's eye bright, but her voice was soft and sleepy and so gentle it sent a thrill through him as she murmured, "We've left the Tower."

* * *

Garahel was ravenous in the morning. Cullen watched him inhale what he was fairly certain was double a child his size usually ate and couldn't help the amusement. Even after receiving proper nourishment for most of a year, Gar was still slim, and two seasons of dependable meals had, until now, broken Gar of any temptation to gorge.

Sens gave Cullen a too-bland look that served as a warning against saying anything on the matter. He kept his peace, but he would have anyway, and it was mildly insulting that Sens expected him to do otherwise. 

Sens herself ate little before she set Garahel on the mule's back. This, of course, prompted a dozen questions and eyes gleaming with excitement. He had never encountered a beast of burden before, so even explaining that a mule was the offspring of a jackass and a horse did little to assuage the questions. 

Sens seemed to regard the mule with caution. She kept pace with it, and a wary eye ever on Garahel. As if Cullen — who took the presented chance to teach Gar the basics of a rider's seat — would let him fall. Or perhaps she wasn't so uncharitable as that; she had always been cautious with the neonates and younger apprentices. It might simply be her usual protectiveness.

Garahel waited until middle morn to ask, "Where are we?"

"Redcliffe Arling," Cullen said. He placed a hand on Gar's back, adjusting him in the saddle.

"Where's that?"

"Near the town of Redcliffe," Cullen told him. Before Garahel could ask where _that_ was, he said, "And that's south and west of the Circle Tower, where the Templars brought you two seasons ago."

"And that," Sens said, "is very far north and west of Denerim, where you were born."

"We're not going back, are we? You're not taking me back there, are you?"

Sens looked startled for a moment, her eyes widening and brow arching, before she quickly reached out and cupped Garahel's chin in her hand. "No, Gar. You're staying with us, and I can't imagine we'll have reason to go there."

Her gaze flicked up to Cullen for a moment, as if asking for confirmation.

"I can't think of one, either," Cullen said, and hoped he sounded reassuring.

* * *

Cullen hadn't planned to stay in the arling for long, but he seriously doubted any pursuers would seek out a pair of mages and a former Templar on a farm. Mages tended to resist the idea of manual labor — and why wouldn't they? — and Templars were used to earning their living by their blades.

Still, they didn't stop until they reached the farthest farm from the town. It was a clearly rich land, well-tended, with decent fencing and even a sign.

Someone had neatly written the word "Dennet" there in white paint.

Cullen almost couldn't believe their good fortune. Dennet of Redcliffe, former Master of Horse for Arl Eamon, was renowned for being no-nonsense but kind. His wife — Evelyn? Elayne? — had a similar reputation.

"We might be able to lie low here a while. No one will look for us here," he told Sens as they passed under the gate.

Sens looked around, but he had no idea what she was thinking. Her face was in its usual mask.

Gar, of course, was immediately fascinated by both the horses and the sheep. He kept quiet, perhaps out of apprehension, but he stared intently at them.

In the paddock nearest the gate, a girl who couldn't have been out of her early teens — perhaps four-and-ten at most — looked away from a foal she'd been bottle feeding in order to watch him and Sens. 

Sens tilted her head for a moment, before moving toward the paddock. "Good afternoon," she said, in the exact same calm, melodic tone with which she greeted neonates. It wasn't overly cheerful or syrup-sweet, but it was soothing and musical. "My name is Sen, and this is Cole."

Very close to their real names; they'd have to hash out better ones the next time they stopped somewhere.

The girl's brown eyes widened in astonishment. She looked around, as if trying to decide if Sens could be talking to anyone else. When she realized she had indeed been the one addressed, she swallowed and squeaked out, "I'm Seanna. My parents own this farm freeshare. W-what business have you here?"

"We seek room and board for a time," Cullen said, " and we're willing to barter or work for it. Can you point us to your parents?"

The girl nodded, grave. Such offers made to a farm of this size would almost always be given due consideration. "Mother'll be in the up garden, and father's, well, somewhere about."

Sens asked, "The up garden?"

The girl went bright pink for a moment before she said, "The garden up the hill." Perhaps because there were several hills around, she turned and pointed at a hill near what had to be the main farmhouse.

"Thank you," Cullen said. As he lead the mule away, he muttered under his breath to Sens, "Sen and Cole? Really?"

"How practised are you at answering to new names?" Sens replied, at the same volume. "I took most of a month."

He almost asked her what she meant, but they were too close to what Seanna had called the up garden. It was, once again, Sens who stepped forward to speak to the woman they found there.

"You are the mistress of the house?" Sens asked.

The woman dusted her hands off, chafing them together, as she stood. "I'm Elaina," she said, a little wary.

Cullen touched Sens's shoulder and put himself between her and Elaina. "This is Sen, and I'm Cole. Does this farm have room to spare for travellers? We'll work for room and board, but we need a respite."

Elaina fixed them with an assessing, narrow stare. There was a long, uncomfortable silence as both Cullen and Sens bore her scrutiny. Cullen couldn't remember the last time he'd been thusly judged. He must have been a child.

Eventually Elaina said, slow and careful, "I can't rightly say. There's a stream over yon; why don't you lot wash the road dust off, and I'll speak with my husband." She phrased it as a question, even as she pointed to the stream, but Cullen would have been a fool to disobey.

"Thank you," he said, simply, and turned away.

It didn't take them long to clean off the road dust. Garahel made faces and drooped his ears all through the scrubbing, but when Sens finally let him wander away on his own, he immediately ventured for the water and began peering and poking at it.

"Fish!" He informed them. "There's fishes!"

Sens's face softened, her eyes crinkling with amusement and aglow with life. She slipped from her boots, hoisted and knotted her skirts, and stepped into the shallows, peering down at the water. Cullen saw her repress several shivers as the chill air on her upper body and the chill water on her feet most likely combined to half freeze her. Still, she ignored it a time as she concentrated on the water.

After a solid minute or so, she surged into action, bending and striking out in the same gesture, and scooped up a fish. It made Garahel laugh with delight, but she tossed it back into the water when the fish began to flop in earnest.

The splash as the fish returned to its swim wetted both Garahel and the mule. Garahel gave a startled shout; the mule merely looked placidly at them all before stepping into the shallows and dipping its head to drink.

Sens then pulled her boots back on and unknotted her skirt as soon as she'd emerged from the stream, and she didn't dally there past washing her hands of fishscale. Cullen imagined it was far too cold to stay.

"Where did you learn that?" He asked. It had been a surprisingly agile movement for a mage, and the apprentices weren't generally allowed onto the island, anyway. She couldn't have picked it up in the Circle.

Sens looked over at him. The smile she'd made with her eyes had gone, replaced once again by the usual mask. "My mother taught me."

Before Cullen could ask anything else, someone began to make their way toward the stream. Cullen cupped his hand over his eyes, to block out any sun glare, and realized the person approaching them was a weather-beaten man of medium skin. Horsemaster Dennet, he assumed.

Dennet surveyed them with the same lingering, appraising look Elaina had given them. Sens seemed immune to his scrutiny, while Garahel simply didn't understand its significance. So it seemed only Cullen was even a little uncomfortable.

"You ever worked with livestock?" Dennet asked without preamble or greeting.

"My family were shepherds," Cullen said. "And Sen can —"

"Don't tell me you're fool enough to try to speak for your woman, boy." Dennet said, cutting him off with a swift, sharp gesture. "You, lass? You're Sen?"

"Yes," Sens said. "I've never worked with livestock, but I'm an herbalist."

Dennet nodded, grave. "And apparently something of a fisherwoman."

Sens didn't do anything so obvious as blush or duck her head. That wasn't her nature. Still, from the way her jaw tightened and the brief lift of her brow, Cullen gathered she wasn't entirely comfortable with Dennet remarking on that private moment.

"Hardly that," she said, tone impassive.

"Right," Dennet said. "Cole. You know what you're about with lambing?" At Cullen's nod, Dennet said, "Good. It's foaling season; daytime, you'll help me as needed, and you'll keep an ear open nights for the foaling. Sen, you'll help Elaina. The pair of you and the boy — his name being?"

Sens said, soft as a prayer, "Garahel. We call him Gar."

"The pair of you and Gar can have the bunkroom off the stables. Maker knows I'm sick of sleeping there. You a hear labor start, you come get me. You decide your respite is over ere foaling ends, you give me a week's notice. No scurrying off in the night, now."

"Of course. Thank you," Sens told him, while Cullen nodded his agreement. It was a truly generous offer. It seemed Dennet was as kind as they said.

Dennet nodded again. "Good. You have the day to get settled in and learn your way 'round, but I want your ears open tonight."

* * *

The bunkroom was less a house and more a single bedroom with a screened bathing area, but it had a fireplace, a decent bed, at least compared to the bedroll he'd been sleeping on for two days, a pair of cedar chests, and a cot. Garahel immediately threw himself onto the cot, uncaring that it had no furs or blankets.

That left the bed for him and Sens, apparently. Cullen felt himself flush at the thought, but the truth was that sleeping alongside Sens and Gar had been a practical matter. Mostly practical, anyway. Sharing a bed with Sens alone, for no reason other than expectations —

No. He shouldn't. He'd put his bedroll on the floor by the fire. It'd be closer to the stable, anyway, and he'd be less distracted.

As it was, he and Sens managed to have all their things unpacked in short order. Sens folded and stored their clothing in the chests, and on top of them, set a variety of items from the apprentice's belt pouch she'd worn. A pair of seed packets, a few elfroot potions and other medicaments, a tin of salve, a vial of cloudy liquid, two one-ounce vials labelled 'plumeria,' and two different letters.

Cullen, on the other hand, stored what he'd brought in the other cedar chest, under the saddle bags and bedrolls. His armor was almost unrecognizable in the lumpy burlap sacks. It wasn't a perfect hiding place, but it'd do a night or so. He'd find better later.

With that done, all that was left was to memorize the lay of the farm and the various names for its areas. The up garden, the shared garden, the west garden, the barn and stable, the east paddock, the middle paddock, the Redcliffe paddock, and of course the various pastures. Gar followed after Cullen, while Sens, looking about as amused as she ever did, had made her way to Elaina's side and quietly offered assistance.

At some point while Cullen was learning where which line of horses usually pastured, Sens and Elaina slipped away to the big house — Dennet's farmhouse, rather than one of the share farmers'.

It turned out that Sens had been helping Elaina and another of the woman of the farm prepare dinner. They had apparently adjusted to working together rather quickly, as both Elaina and the other woman already seemed fond of Sens, and Sens was almost friendly with them.

The meal was lively. They all gathered in the big house's dining room, just off its kitchen. It was there that Dennet and Elaina introduced the rest of the farmholders to Cullen and Sens. Cullen tried to mark their names, but there were five male farmholders and assorted wives, and a sundry of children. 

No point worrying about it. Either he'd gradually get a sense of which children belonged to whom, and who was married to whom, or he wouldn't be there long enough for it to matter.

There was beer — in the center and north of Ferelden, there was always beer — and fresh-baked bread and a hearty lamb stew. They even had spoons for the stew, and that the spoons were wooden made it no less a sign of a special occasion. The final piece of the meal was a dish of vegetables that had been grilled lightly in oil or butter and then seasoned. Those last, Elaina said, had been Sens's contribution.

He shouldn't have been surprised that it was not only good enough to go on the dining table, it was snapped up quickly by most of the adults. (Children eating vegetables for anything short of bribery apparently didn't happen on this farmhold, unlike the Circle.) It was unkind of him to assume that Sens wouldn't be able to manage in a position she'd essentially courted. And yet — he was so used to thinking of her as a mage and a scholar. It was hard to imagine her at home in a kitchen, or doing laundry, or any of the other thousand things one did outside the Circle Tower.

The worst of it, unsurprisingly, was the come-to-know-you chatter. On his part, it was mostly painless. His family were shepherds in Honnleath, after all. No point in hiding that. Sens posed a problem — with her dark skin, she was almost certainly not a Fereldan elf, and had little reason to be with a human or in Redcliffe — but she side-stepped it smoothly by saying only Ferelden was worth mentioning. A nice play to Fereldan patriotism, that, he supposed.

Gar was the bigger problem, if only because they hadn't rehearsed a story. Sens looked to Cullen, who looked back at her.

"He's ours," Cullen said in the kind of tone that brooked no argument. He'd mostly used it to tell mages studying for academic examinations or writing treatises for a grade that the Library was _closed_ and curfew had been called. Now he was apparently using it to tell a table full of people who'd given him a place to stay to mind their own business.

The adults around the table all shared a look. The kind of look that said they were perfectly aware that there was no possible way a human had fathered an elf and therefore Gar wasn't his. Some of the dubious looks cast his way hinted that though they knew, they weren't sure _he_ did.

Which was, frankly, insulting.

"I'm the only father he's ever known," Cullen said, and helped himself to another bowl of lamb stew. He cut another slice of the bread — crusty and warm, but soft on the inside — and dipped it in the stew in lieu of using the wooden spoon provided. He'd never have done it in the Tower, but country manners seemed appropriate just now.

The conversation turned, after that. Eventually, someone asked a question that made Sens tense up. He doubted anyone else could see it, but she was holding herself completely still, in much the same way she had been before leaving the Tower for the first time.

"Your markings — are they that Dalish face paint?" Dennet asked.

Sens's face turned truly mask-like, impassive and impersonal. "I believe it to be a Dalish design, but I did not earn it within a clan."

The rest of the table was polite enough to nod and dismiss the topic, but apparently nobody had explained to Seanna that tattoos were often deeply personal. It wasn't particularly common in Ferelden, so perhaps the subject had never come up.

As it was, Seanna leaned forward and said, "I think it's lovely. Do you know what it means?"

Another stiff pause, and though her face was frozen and hollowed-out, Cullen saw her eyes flick to Garahel, as if considering what was appropriate for his ears. Sens opened her mouth, and said, very carefully, "I suppose it's a charming enough pattern. I believe it represents the one the Dalish call the Friend of the Dead, but I honestly couldn't say. Its meaning to me is simple adornment."

And she was _lying_. Through her teeth. He wasn't sure how he knew, what clues gave her away, but as sure as he knew his own name, he knew that she had just dissembled.

What meaning could there be in an imitation Dalish tattoo that Sens was unwilling to share, particularly in front of Gar? That she didn't want to share a personal truth with a pack of strangers who knew her by a false name, he could well understand, but why did she want to hide that truth from Gar?

He finished the meal, and was aware of laughing, of talking. Nobody seemed to be looking at him as though he'd grown another head, or as if they thought him a liar or a fallen Templar. Beyond that, his mind seemed to record little, focusing instead on a new facet in the mystery that Sens Surana had always been.

* * *

After dinner, poor Garahel was so exhausted from the day they'd had that he was all but stumbling. When he nearly walked into a wall, Sens bent to swoop him up, pillowing his head on her shoulder. He immediately wrapped his little arms and legs around her, clinging on as tight as he had the night he'd come to the Tower.

Cullen couldn't help the way he began to smile. He knew he must look like a lovelorn fool, to stare down so fondly. But looking madly in love with… what, the assumed mother of his son? That was good, wasn't it?

The moment they were in their bedroom, he shut the door for warmth and built a fire. Sens laid Garahel down on the bed, where he curled onto his side and watched them sleepily.

Sens, too, was watchful. Especially as Cullen retrieved a bedroll from one of the cedar chests. As he began to lay it out before the fire, Sens's face — usually so mild and difficult to read — took on a sharp expression.

He turned back to the fire, gauging a safe distance from the sparks. So intent was he on the soft pop and hiss of flame, on unrolling the bundle and laying it out, that he didn't hear her move. He'd no idea she'd left the bed until she was standing before him.

"Please stop that," she said, voice soft, tone gentle, but there was a thread of command there.

Cullen stiffened. He turned to look at her, but with the fire the only light in the room, her face was mostly in shadow. "What?"

Sens held her hand out for the bedroll, and when he handed it to her, she touched his upper arm and nodded to the bed. In a move that made little sense to him, she headed over to the cot and moved it until it was where he'd thought would be safe from flying sparks. 

There was no way that cot would hold his weight, and yet she tossed the bedroll, another couple of blankets, and a pillow onto it. Once she was satisfied with her work, she headed back to the bed, passing him completely by, and sat next to Garahel.

"Do you think you can sleep on your own tonight?" She asked, soft and gentle. "You've done very well since we left the Tower, but this is a new place, with new people, and we've said a lot of things that might not make sense to you. It's natural to be scared."

"You told everyone you were my parents," Gar said. His voice was grave, but soft with sleepiness. "In the Tower, you said not to tell lies, but here, you both lied."

Sens looked over to Cullen, but then she pressed a little closer to Gar. She stroked one hand over his curls, then traced the line of one of his ears. 

Cullen cleared his throat, and gently offered, "Sometimes adults have to lie to each other, to protect themselves. If we had told them the truth, they might've tried to send us back to the Tower, or alerted the Templars in the Redcliffe Chantry. It's not a thing we should be proud of, or do often."

"Are we not going back?"

"No," Sens said, and her eyes were luminous in the darkness, her tone as quietly fierce as he'd ever heard it. "Not ever."

"Oh." A pause, and Garahel asked, "Then should I call you Mother and Father?"

Cullen bit his cheek, but his mouth curved up into a fond, amused smile without his permission. "A little formal, I think. Da or Papa — those are better. Whatever you like, really, so long as it isn't 'Ser Cullen.'"

"The elven word for 'mother,' is 'mamae.'" Sens gave Gar one of her half-smiles. The word sounded hushed in her mouth, musical. Almost reverent. Cullen wondered once again just how she'd come to the Tower, and what she concealed.

Garahel was silent a moment, and then he said, "Mam _ae_." He mimicked her lyrical, liquid accent on the words — so _foreign_ sounding, despite being only two syllables — almost perfectly.

"Well done," Sens told him. She rested her palm against Garahel's forehead, perhaps in place of a kiss, and added, "If you'd still like to learn what I know of our old language, I see no harm in teaching you, now."

That was news. He'd never heard that Gar wanted to learn to speak the elven tongue. Neither Gar nor Sens had ever mentioned this to him. And why in the Maker's name would teaching him to speak it have done him harm in the Circle?

"What harm was there before?" The question was out of his mouth before he could think better of it. And yet he did not regret asking.

"Tevinter and the elven language, as I learned to speak it, borrow much from each other. They share many common root words. And of course the Tevinters themselves use what remains of the tongue of the ancient elves to write and talk about magic." A pause, and Sens looked directly at him. Her eyes burned the strange yellow-green of a cat's at night. "The Knight-Captain — the one before Captain Hadley — warned me that for a heretic to speak such a language in a house of the Chantry was unworthy and seditious, and I would be placed in solitary for further infractions."

"You _are_ Dalish, then," he said, numb. "And that is their blood-writing on your face."

"I am not Dalish. I have been out of the forests for eleven years." Sens gave him a serious look, as if to impress upon him the weight she placed on that fact. She would never, he realized, admit to such ancestry — nor even speak of it, except to teach Garahel elven. But then her expression smoothed itself away, turning once again to the soothing, protective gentleness she used with children, and her voice softened as she asked, "Well, Garahel? Do you think you can sleep alone again tonight?"

Garahel cast a look at the cot, then yawned hugely. "I think so. I want to try." He pushed himself up and off the bed, then climbed onto the cot, burying himself in its covers.

Which evidently left the bed for Cullen and Sens.

Sens seemed unmoved by this fact. But then, of course she was: she was its architect. She breezed by Cullen, unlacing her dress as she went. She didn't bother trying to hide. She slipped out of the dress, right in front of him, then folded it and stuffed it in the sack they'd been using to store clothes they couldn't wear again until they'd washed them.

She'd been wearing only a white under-dress beneath her gown. Between the firelight and her dark skin beneath the pale fabric, it might well have been nothing. The shape of her showed through the linen and the way it clung to her skin as she moved, hiking the slip's skirt and hooking her thumbs in her stockings —

Cullen swallowed at the sight of her shimmy, awkward by its nature and yet clearly practiced. He tried to drag his gaze somewhere more appropriate before he finally turned away, feeling awkward.

Maker's breath, she hadn't even bothered with the screen.

Then again, why should she? She was used to being watched. Templars watched mages and apprentices under every circumstance: dressing, undressing, bathing, sleeping. Any attempt by an apprentice to screen their movements was punished. An apprentice who'd resided eleven years would surely have no modesty left.

That thought — that of course she would torment him like this; it had been his job to oversee such things for the past year, and her experiences had essentially beaten any other option out of her — cooled his ardor considerably. He took in a deep breath, let it out, and summoned what distance he'd been able to gain in the last year.

When he turned back, Sens was out of her stockings and was smoothing her skirt down. She made her way back to the bed, pausing only briefly at his side. She looked up at him for a moment, then slid into the bed and under the covers. She moved until she was closer to the wall, leaving him plenty of room.

His turn, evidently. Sens at least did him the kindness of turning to face the wall. He retrieved a softer pair of trousers from the chest, but shucked his clothing from the side of the bed, his back to Sens. He tossed the muddy clothes he'd worn that day toward the laundry bag.

Once he'd slid back under the covers and settled himself — for once on his side rather than his back, but that seemed more prudent, at this juncture — Sens rolled over briefly. She peeked her head over the top of his shoulder, then murmured, with her mouth against his ear, "Laundry goes _in_ the bag."

Andraste's wounds, was she trying to be cruel? He suppressed the automatic shudder at the gust of her breath along his ear and neck, at how warm her lips felt, at the way her body moulded to his, breasts pressing against his back.

"I know," he replied. "But it's cold out there. Better in here. I'll get it in the morning."

Sens made a strange, dry rasping noise low in her throat. He listened for a few moments and felt his whole face furrow into a frown. She had quieted by the time he realized the sound had been suppressed laughter.

"That was funny to you?"

A pause. Sens's voice was oddly warm, as if she were suppressing one of her lip twitch smiles, as she said, "You… didn't intend that double meaning?"

"Double meaning?" He probably sounded dazed. He certainly felt dazed. He examined his words again and felt his whole body flush. "Sens, I'm not — I didn't intend — I —" He cut himself off, and demanded, instead, "You've never seemed the type to make such jests!"

"I don't, usually." She shrugged, and Maker's breath, he could feel it. "I just couldn't help hearing it this time."

He sighed. "We've longer, harder days than I suspect you're used to ahead of us, and I think you may be overtired. Best just to sleep now."

Once again, Sens went silent, and he had the impression she was giving the room at large — since she was presently resting her head on his upper arm — one of her frostier looks. Then she said, "As you say." She didn't sound upset, or even as distant as she had the last time she'd used that phrase with him.

He felt no less a heel.

She rolled over, away from him, and then shifted so that they were back to back. This seemed to involve some manner of very distracting wriggling, but she slowly stilled, tangling her legs and feet in his.

Cullen took in a deep breath to steady himself. A foolish reflex; a foolish thought. His nose filled once again with that damnable flower scent, and that helped him not at all.

Seemed it was best he think cold, boring thoughts.

After a moment, Sens trailed her toes along the inside of his calf, and asked, sounding sleepy, "Cullen?"

"Sens?"

She waited to speak, presumably until she was certain of what she'd say. "Why did you choose this?"

He drew in another deep breath, but this time caught only a touch of warming wood and faint traces of woodsmoke. "Because I — no. Because what the Knight-Commander wanted to do — I couldn't let it happen. It was wrong. I didn't become a Templar to hurt innocent people, and neither did Ser Greagoir. It was a violation of our vows."

"The Chantry says that mages are not innocent."

"The Chant of Light," not that she'd ever listened to a word of it, he was sure, "says that the Magisters weren't innocent, and that magic exists to serve the people, not make slaves of them. You were less in danger of making slaves than of becoming one."

There was silence, as Sens digested that. And then she said, softly, "You may not wish for thanks, but I am still grateful."

"You shouldn't thank me for doing the right thing."

"I knew you'd say that," Sens said, and her voice was warm again, as though she were holding in her version of a smile. "Good night, Cullen. Sleep well."

"Dream well," he replied, by rote.

* * *

His dreams that night were hazy and vague, but there no few inappropriate moments in them. His sleeping self couldn't seem to shake how easy it would be to roll over and take Sens in his arms, how simple and pleasant a thing it would be to bury his nose in her hair, to press kisses against her neck and shoulders while he eased the skirt of her shift up over her slim, smooth thighs. 

No matter how he tried to redirect, he heard her voice, broken and begging, while her dream self writhed on his fingers. The noise echoed around in his head as he woke, and his whole body buzzed with the pleasure of sensations that hadn't happened.

He took himself in hand, once he'd managed to make himself stagger from bed and behind the screen. He felt an obscure guilt at the necessity; focusing on the sensation rather than any particular fantasy didn't change the fact that it had been thoughts of a woman in his charge that drove him to it and its subsequent completion. 

He did at least make sure to shove the laundry in the bag, as he'd promised.

* * *

Nights and mornings notwithstanding, the time at Dennet's farm became an easy routine, and quickly, at that. Within their first week, he was used to rising before Sens or Gar for perfectly sufficient reasons and hauling in water for Elaina, then reporting to Dennet. He spent afternoons either hiking to check on sheep, bring in horses, or doing meaningless strength labor. Nights, he spent in bed with an ear on the stables.

He hauled more water and split more wood than any other man in the freehold, and didn't begrudge the work. Exertion was good for physical frustrations.

What Sens and Gar did, he wasn't certain, but Elaina and Dennet had no complaints. He did notice that where Sens went, Seanna followed after, like a lamb after an ewe. Or, considering the way Seanna once dropped a bucket of water on her foot when Sens stooped to inspect an herb in the garden, perhaps very _un_ like a lamb and its ewe.

He hadn't been able to stifle the laugh, and Seanna had glared at him with all the affronted dignity a girl of four-and-ten could muster. It had been considerable.

"Sen has that effect on people," he'd said. "Where we last lived, she did that to somebody every day. Even me, at times."

Seanna had looked him up and down, given a derisive snort, and replied, "You about half the time, I bet!"

In response, Cullen felt his cheeks heat up like an iron in a fire. But he'd forced the embarrassment down and said only, "Well, I did marry her." Not precisely true, but he _had_ spirited her away from the Tower and was raising a child with her. For most Templars, that would be near enough to serve.

Seanna had laughed, her dignity restored, and that had been that.

Matters were no less easy among him and the freeholders. As he'd thought he would, he grew a gradual sense of the farm itself, of who lived where and with whom and the names of all concerned.

Mealtimes featured less of the stilted come-to-know-you chatter and more of the blend of stubborn arguments, forthright discussion, and broad friendliness Fereldans were known for. Gar earned a reputation for having somehow inherited or learned his grave nature — a nature that made him seem too old for his years and slightly outsized — from Cullen, who was apparently too earnest for his own good. Sens was soon pitied for how little she knew of the Chant, and Seanna took it upon herself to teach her.

That Sens found this an irritation, only Cullen knew. He told her in bed, once Gar was asleep, that it was far better the people of the farm pity her ignorance than despise her heresy.

* * *

"I'm an infidel, or perhaps a blasphemer, and certainly a heathen," she'd replied, "but not a heretic. I could only be a heretic if I were attempting to use the Dissonant Verses or a deliberate misunderstanding of the Chant to make false claims."

"Spoken like a scholar," he'd said through a smile. The temptation to roll over, to gather her in his arms and press kisses to the top of her head, to her shoulders, was so great he'd clenched his fist against it.

She saw the clenched fist and misinterpreted it. She'd reached out, smoothing the pads of her fingers along his knuckles until he relaxed the hand. Once his hand was open in hers, she placed her fingertips to the calluses on his palm, creating slim points of cool on skin that always ran a touch too hot.

"Does it bother you?" She'd asked.

"What, your academic bent? Or that you don't share my faith?"

"Either." She traced lines on his hand, and he shuddered. It was a struggle not to pull his hand away in defense of his already strained feelings for her.

"No. I first met you as a scholar and an unbeliever — the first time I ever saw you, the Revered Mother had dragged you to the Knight-Commander's office to complain of minor heresies some of the Knights were spreading to the neonates. You made it plain you cared little for what we believed, save that it didn't harm children."

Sens was very quiet for a moment. He shifted his hand in her grasp, moving her fingers around on his palm, before closing his grip enough to rub his thumb against her skin. She didn't seem to draw comfort from the gesture, but she also didn't seem to dislike it. She didn't pull away, at least.

"I had children of six and seven asking me if their magic meant that the Maker had taken away their souls, or if they'd simply never had them."

"It's a common misunderstanding of the Chant." And it was. Every Templar took a course on identifying and dealing with such attitudes among the smallfolk. When it came to it, most Templars served in Chantries, where they would be most likely to find newly emergent mages, and where they would have to quickly silence such talk so they could take the mage somewhere safe to await Templars of the Circle.

"Not knowing if you have a soul or not — that's only a minor heresy?" Sens's voice was very calm. She sounded perfectly at ease, not in the least displeased with him or what he was saying. Which was _not_ a trustworthy sign of her mood. It was more likely something had offended Sens right down to her heretical toes. Maker only knew what, though.

"Yes," he said, confused. "Confusion on the nature of a mortal person — that's minor. It's confusion on a central point, like the nature of Andraste or the Maker or Maferath's actions, that's major."

"So, that there is one world, one god, one prophet, and each person in the world has one soul: those are ancillary?"

"That last is, yes," he said, but even in his own ears he sounded uncertain.

* * *

After dinner, custody of Gar was his. Though he suspected this might change soon enough — Sens had more experience than he in tutoring children — he was the one to make sure Garahel had some kind of lesson every evening. Elaina still had the primer with which she'd taught Seanna to read, and had been willing enough to let Cullen make use of it.

Gar, naturally, still struggled with reading, but he loved the lessons regardless. Under Cullen's supervision, he pushed himself through a shortened, simplified version of the story of Ferelden's liberation. Cullen had learned to read with a similar primer, and he had been no less fascinated by the story in his own childhood.

The arithmetic problems in the primer were a touch more complex than those of the Circle's primer — which had been, first, religious instruction and, second, a quick introduction to the Schools of Magic — and Gar loved those, too.

The lessons Gar seemed to enjoy most, though, were the singing lessons. Cullen had to admit they were perhaps the most fun. First, he and Gar would settle onto the bed, next to Sens, who watched with her eyes softening at their corners.

"Sit a little straighter, Gar," he said. "Your voice will come out all crumpled."

Gar immediately straightened at the reminder, though he would of course forget by the next lesson.

"Hm. Shall we start with the Canticle of Threnodies, or something a little easier?" He teased, gently chucking Gar under the chin.

Gar made an expression so serious it surely must have been a parody of some kind. "I can't sing the Chant."

"No, of course you can't. Maybe we should start with some exercises? I bet you haven't said more than ten words together today." An exaggeration, yes, but Gar's grave temperament did seem to come with quiet. 

The vocal exercises were mostly trills, with a few other noises and expressions thrown in to loosen cheeks and mouth. He tossed in a few arpeggios, partly to help with range, and partly because they kept Gar amused. From the way Gar's eyes sparkled, he regarded the exercises as great fun.

The greater fun, though, lay in the music itself. Every lesson required at least one reminder that the voice came from the belly, not the nose, the throat, the chest. But as the lessons went on, those reminders came fewer and fewer, and they could quickly settle into simple songs. 

Cullen had, of course, been taught to sing on hymns and Canticles. But Gar was far too young for the Chant, and the hymns were a touch complicated.

So instead, he taught Gar the shepherd's songs of Honnleath, that he'd grown up hearing being called down the hills.

The first of these, of course, was 'The Red Rose,' because it provided just the right challenge. His primary focus, besides getting Gar to match pitches — which wasn't nearly so difficult as he'd assumed — was developing the boy's lung capacity and diaphragm strength.

Gar's voice had the usual sweet lilt heard in children — Cullen had heard similar from the boys who’d been raised within the Chantry, always intended as Templars — but there was more than a hint of depth there, considering his age. Cullen had no doubt that as the boy grew, his voice would age with him, turning richer and darker.

He did, at least, keep on target during the chorus of 'The Red Rose,' unlike Cullen, whose voice _still_ turned wistful. He could feel Sens's eyes on him, assessing, wondering, and he felt his face heat.

"You always sound sad when you sing that," Garahel said, staring up at him.

"So it would seem." He tousled Gar's curls. "So I suppose your control on your voice is better than mine, eh?"

Gar shook his head, eyes wide and earnest. "You can sing all sorts of things I can't."

"I've just been at it longer. You'll be able to sing all I can and more, when you're my age. Now, one last song, I think, and then bedtime."

The last song he picked was almost always one of the simpler hymns. Songs entire congregations could join in. Tonight, he chose 'Bright Star.' It had been an Orlesian hymn, though it had long been translated into the Kingstongue, and it provided a new challenge: polyphony. He wasn't entirely sure a four year old would grasp it, so he simplified where he could. Gar could learn the proper version later, when he was better prepared for the challenge, and he greatly doubted Sens would hear the lack of complexity.

Gar picked up the simple version easily, parroting notes in a higher register. His voice was too young, too bright, to carry the weight inherent in an exultation of the masses who had flocked to Andraste's side, but he did surprisingly well. Cullen might be able to move on to teaching him the reciting tones and cadences for the Chant of Light sooner than he'd expected.

"Well done," Cullen said, squeezing Gar's shoulder. He passed a hand over Gar's curls. "And now to bed."

"Please not yet," Gar replied in something perilously close to a whine. His ears even drooped. Cullen looked over at Sens, unwilling to take too strong a tone at this juncture; he didn't mind being firm, but with Gar overtired and his own natural projection, he was more likely to come across as yelling, which would do little good.

Sens eyed Garahel a moment, likely taking in the same details Cullen had. After a silence, she said, in the lyric but firm tones she'd used with the other neonates, "To bed, Garahel. It's been a long day, and we all have much to sleep on." She paused, reaching out, and tugged on one of Gar's ears, a smile crinkling in the corners of her eyes. Her voice was gentler when she added, "And don't droop these so. It's unbecoming."

Garahel made another whining noise, but he seemed to sense that neither Sens nor Cullen would budge. After another moment in which he lifted his ears again, he finally clambered down from the bed and over to his cot.

Cullen rose and tucked him in, gently passing a hand along the messy curls. They should probably give him a shearing, or at least a trim; between his delicate features and small stature, all that hair would soon make him look a girl.

"Dream well, Gar," he said.

Garahel yawned, shifting in his spot as he did so, and asked in a soft, sleepy tone, "Promise to wake me if one of the mares foals?"

"You shan't sleep through, I promise," Cullen told him. He rubbed his thumb along one of Gar's cheekbones, just below his eye, and said, "Rest, Gar. You'll need it, especially if one of the mares delivers tonight."

"'Night, then, Papa," Gar said, and sounded halfway to dreaming already. Something lodged itself into Cullen's throat, and his ribs felt too small to contain whatever lay beneath them. Perhaps he was having an attack of the lungs; surely his heart had not just tried to escape him, grown too large to be kept. And the boy destroyed him further, with an obscenely casual ease, as he added, in a careless almost-whisper brought on by sleep, "Love you."

His voice came out strangled when he said, "I love you too, Gar."

* * *

Naturally, none of the mares foaled that night. Garahel was disappointed in the morning, but Cullen managed to cheer him back up again by pointing out that they would certainly stay on the farm until the foaling was done.

As their second week at the farm began, so did the cravings. Truth be told, the cravings were always there, but they were usually more manageable. 

Not so, now. Now, his head ached, and his bones burned, and his skin crawled all the time. The constant pain wrought havoc on his temper, though he managed to keep even tones with Garahel and Dennet. He was short with the other farmhands, though, and given the way Sens ducked her gaze so often in their room, he must have been short with her, as well. The worst of it was that he seemed perfectly reasonable to himself.

Still, considering that he wasn't sure when he'd be able to find lyrium of the proper grade again, it seemed wisest to go as long as he could without a dose. He craved it, yes, and his body was begging for it. But he didn't _need_ it. Not yet.

Nights, after Garahel was asleep, had become a private time for he and Sens in the first week. This did not change in the second, though Sens seemed slightly more withdrawn. He would lie on his back, and allow her to pillow her head on his arm or his chest. Her skin was always cool against his, drier, though she never remarked on how prone he was to fever or sweat.

One night, when the headache and the fever were combining to make something truly awful of him, he shucked his shirt and tossed it at the laundry bag. For once, Sens made no comment about where laundry ought go.

Instead, she said, softly, "This may surprise or amuse you, but I have not seen a man's bare chest since I was a child, and never a human's." 

The comment — so apropos of nothing as to be completely unlike Sens — baffled him. When he looked down at her, she arched an eyebrow.

"And it should surprise me," he said, slowly, "because of the rumors about your… activities, in the Circle?" The rumors that she clearly knew of and said she cared nothing about? Maker, that he'd even thought she'd referenced before, in saying that she was unused to sleeping alone?

"Ah," Sens said, and here she turned toneless again. Carefully, she said, "You have believed the rumors to be false."

"Maker's sake, Sens," he groaned. He barred his arm over his eyes, as if blocking the light would lessen the headache. "This… these meaningless trifles, you refer to so often — why do you never tell me anything real?"

Sens went still. "Cullen?"

"I couldn't care less about the rumors, true or false, but why don't I know where you're from, if not Ferelden?" It was insane to be so angry about this, and yet he _was_. They were raising a child together; was it so much to ask to know her? "Why haven't you told me how you came to the Tower? I heard one of the mages say Kingstongue isn't your first language — is that true? You said yourself that 'Sens' isn't the name your mother gave you, so what is?"

"You do not know those things because I do not speak of them. To anyone. Not the First Enchanter. Not Jowan. Not Garahel."

"And not me, either, I take it." He couldn't keep the bitterness from his voice. 

Sens must have noticed it, because when she spoke, her tone was the bland, at ease voice she used only when she was well and truly angry. The last time he'd heard it, a Templar had been forcibly dragging a neonate by the upper arm, uncaring that he could have dislocated the child's shoulder. When Sens had questioned him, he'd been utterly uncaring that the neonate in his hands _was_ a child: he had orders, he'd said, to take the neonate to a different lesson, and he was making sure that happened in a timely fashion.

It had set off her rage in a way nothing had since. Until now. Until him.

"Do you think your mere curiosity so important that I must answer these questions?"

"They're simple facts, Sens," he pointed out, he hoped more reasonably than his initial torrent of questions had come across. Given the way Sens's eyes narrowed, he suspected not. Still, onward: "Most people tell others such things as a matter of course."

"You believe you are _owed_ answers, then, for your assistance. You would have me speak of this to you, when it is not my custom to speak of it at all, if only because they are simple questions?"

He sighed. "That wasn't what I meant, and you know it. I just want to know more about you. Your past. Or, Maker, why you always smell like flowers I can't name. Is it your skin or your hair you perfume?"

He had meant it to break the tension between them, to set her at ease. And yet his voice came out demanding, and she trembled against him, before she abruptly turned away.

"I have made allowances for your temper, of late," she said, just barely louder than a whisper, but with a voice that was, once again, bland and mild with towering fury, "but I will not have my history or my privacy or my bathing habits pried into. I understand you are in some pain; to its ending, I… have lyrium draughts and high-quality grains."

Maker's breath, she was aware of the lyrium dosing. And he didn't even want to think about how an apprentice could have got her hands on lyrium, processed or in grain.

Still, the thought of lyrium made him feel lightheaded. The searing pain in his skull eased, and he could have sworn the fever and the dull throb of his joints all lessened by degrees at the mere thought of having a back-up supply.

"You never mentioned it to me," he said, and couldn't keep the accusation out of his tone.

"I wasn't sure how to introduce the subject. 'I hear Templars are addicted to lyrium,' seemed rude. It also seemed rude to attribute your short temper to lyrium withdrawal. I was apparently remiss to observe such niceties."

"Where did you even get the lyrium?" No point trying not to accuse her now. Andraste preserve them, what had she done? Lyrium theft was taken very, very seriously by the Chantry and the Templars. It was why the addicts used smugglers. They were bound to be pursued, now.

"The stockroom."

How had an apprentice even…?

"Irving helped," she added, and, well, that explained nearly everything. Irving was surely wise enough to set up some scapegoat. Cullen pitied the poor mage, whoever he was.

"Of course he did," Cullen said, and sighed. "I... thank you." Maker, this end of the conversation was disarming. He was wrong-footed. "About earlier..."

"Apology accepted," Sens said, but her voice was a sleepy murmur, as if she'd entirely written the day off and he was keeping her awake.

He hadn't actually been about to apologize, as such. It was perhaps better to let that rest than to point out that he still wasn't entirely convinced he'd been wrong. It seemed natural to want to know more about a woman who slept with her feet tangled in his. Still, he'd clearly gone about it the entirely wrong way. He could concede that much.

"Thank you," he said again, and rolled onto his side. This time, though, he faced Sens rather than the outer edge of the bed. "I am willing to wait and earn your trust, Sens. But I do wish you'd speak to me. That's not... that's not these cravings or my temper talking."

"We should sleep," she said. "I'm tired, and I'm sure you have a long day ahead of you."

"Sens..."

She wriggled, trying to tangle her legs in the usual fashion, and he sighed, then rolled to face the rest of the room.

* * *

Naturally, the first of the mares began her labor just as Cullen was falling asleep. Garahel did not sleep through — indeed, Cullen sent him running for the Horsemaster immediately as he made his way to the stable — but if Sens woke, she chose not to stir from their bed. He supposed she did not wish to speak to him further that night, nor even see his face.

Cullen and Dennet watched the mare through her delivery, though she clearly needed little help. It was more a precaution against a breech birth or other complications. The mare didn't even seem particularly distressed by her pain, which went against very nearly every experience Cullen had of horses. Sheep, at least, were generally too stupid to know any better; horses had always seemed to Cullen to be just smart enough to be vastly inconvenient.

"Oh, she's been through this before," Dennet said, when Cullen voiced this observation. 

Cullen nodded, and said nothing more. He turned his eyes, his mind, and what remained of his good temper to the matter at hand.

Garahel was, of course, gleefully disgusted by the process. Cullen had felt similarly, as a child; looking on it now, he felt the wholly natural — if slimy, bloody, and filled with alarmingly gaping orifices — events really had nothing on abominations. He could watch this as needed, but he hoped fervently never to see another mage become an abomination.

But once the foal was finally fully out, Cullen heated water and let Garahel help him clean the foal off. The mare was rather more busy dealing with the afterbirth, which Dennet checked over both the mare and the placenta. After a few moments, Dennet nodded.

Cullen couldn't help watching, indulgently, as Garahel stroked his fingers along the foal's face. His delight, when the foal butted its head against his, made Cullen's heart squeeze in his chest. And the simple, obvious joy watching the foal stumble around, bent on reaching its mother, brought to Gar — even from over the edge of the stall's gate, where Dennet had sent him to keep him safe from the protective mother — made even Dennet smile.

Something in him that had been tensing for days eased.

* * *

Cullen prepared a dose of lyrium later that night, so late that it was essentially the next day. The motions of grinding granules into a very fine powder, then lining it up neatly, were familiar and comforting. The ache in his bones settled, and the rest of the tension that had built up eased immediately. He was euphoric even before he drew the glass tube from his works kit, even before he bent down and inhaled.

The song ran in his blood, bubbled up inside his mind and made the whole world seem to glow and sing and spin. Cullen forced himself to stay seated, not to try and accomplish all the things that he felt certain he could.

Instead, he simply breathed in deep, and made sure to savor the way every movement brought out new notes in the song. It was like having some sort of tinkling silver river burbling in the back of his thoughts.

He waited an hour, then cleared up the works kit, took care of his morning routine, and went off to haul water.

* * *

Later in the morning, when Cullen had gone up into the hills to watch the flocks, he found himself breaking off blades of grass and twisting them together into braids. Not even splitting wood for winter had settled the restless energy the lyrium left him with; he and one of the shepherd dogs could keep an eye on the sheep, but Maker, he needed something to do with his hands.

Also something to chew on, he realized. He was clenching his jaw.

Cullen sighed and stood, but as he moved to follow one of the ewes who seemed intent on wandering further from the flock than was good for her, he heard rustling behind him. He turned, half-expecting to see Dennet's sheepdog, but still unable to stop himself tensing. He relaxed when a curly head popped up over the hillock.

"Ellar said you'd be up this way," Garahel said.

Some part of Cullen instinctively hated the thought of Garahel wandering about the hills alone. He was tiny and fragile and had no real concept of what was and wasn't dangerous. And yet, Cullen had done exactly as Gar was now, and from younger.

There _were_ fewer bears around Honnleath, though.

"Well," he said, just a touch too lightly, "Ellar was right. But next time don't just come up here alone. I'd hate for you to be carried off by a bear."

Gar gave him a solemn nod, and then asked, "What do those look like?"

And Cullen had to laugh. "Maker love you, Gar. They're big and hairy, and they go sometimes on all fours and sometimes on two legs. I'll show you a picture, if we ever go somewhere with books again."

Gar nodded. "Ellar says he thinks you spends afternoons in a nap."

"Ellar talks too much," Cullen replied. At least Ellar hadn't said anything outright offensive to Gar. So far, anyway. The Hinterlands tended to be slightly friendlier to elves than the Coastlands or the Bannorn, but Cullen knew it was only a matter of time before somebody said something.

"What _do_ you do?" Gar picked up one of the braids of long grass, twisting and untwisting it in his hands before, naturally, whacking it against the rock Cullen had been leaning against.

"I watch the sheep, mostly."

"What's this?" Gar asked, flailing the braid.

Cullen said, "Something to do with my hands. You want to learn how to make them?"

Gar noded, eagerly, and planted himself next to Cullen. He stuck like a little burr to Cullen's side, eyes intent on Cullen's fingers as he wove strand after strand, slow and careful. After a few minutes of this, Gar picked up a few blades of long grass and mimicked Cullen, his small hands surprisingly nimble.

The afternoon passed peaceably, with Cullen keeping half an eye on the flock, half an eye on Garahel, an ear on the dog, and his hands busy with the woven grass, while Gar darted about the clearing. Every so often, the lyrium still in his blood would sing again, leaving Cullen glad he was leaning his back against something. Between the lyrium and the low, golden light natural to such hours, the afternoon seemed to glow from the inside out.

Cullen was just riding one such new moment of lyrium song when Gar trundled over, carrying an armload of flowers.

He didn't dare say anything of it, for fear his voice would slur. And the way his heart sped up and his blood turned thin and cold at the thought of Gar _seeing_ him like this did nothing to silence the song or make the world less dreamlike. Feeling feverish, he made a 'why' gesture at Gar.

"Mamae should have flowers," Gar said, because apparently Seana had been teaching him tooth-rotting sweetness while Cullen had been up in the hills. Or perhaps Gar had picked up on the tensions between Cullen and Sens. They had been building some time before last night's argument.

Cullen stared at the flowers, then at Gar's face. He saw only high cheekbones, round cheeks, and earnest green eyes. No hint of mischief or even of some sort of plan. The boy gave no sign of a secret desire for his guardians to settle their differences. 

Which was all to the good, Cullen supposed, as he had his suspicions of how Sens would interpret such a gesture. Considering the state of things, it would likely seem a transparent attempt to bribe his way back into her good graces.

He half wanted to tell Gar to take the flowers to Sens himself, but Cullen dared not say anything at all. So he gestured, and Gar gleefully dumped the flowers in Cullen's lap. Cullen looked down a moment, long enough to sort stems, and then back up again to check on the sheep.

The shepherd dog was off in the distance, attempting to herd a ewe closer to the rest of the flock, barking her 'listen to me' bark as she did so. No danger, then. Cullen let his head fall back against the rock, though he wasn't tired, then turned to the flowers.

Stringing them together into a garland was easy. So was making sure the garland curved, until he could fashion a crown of it. It would have been easier if Sens had been nearby, but he managed well enough. 

Gar watched his hands move, as deeply interested as he had been in the braided grass. He gave Cullen one of his rarer smiles — the one that seemed to lift the gravity from his young face with surprising sweetness, if only for a moment — when Cullen finished the crown.

"You should give it to Mamae," Gar said. "It's pretty. She'll like it."

Cullen had no excuse not to answer. He paused, took a deep breath, and said, careful to shape each word, "She'd like it better from you." 

He didn't slur, at least. No, instead, his mouth's temptation was to slide all the words into one rapid-shot burst of syllables. How he was going to manage at dinner, he wasn't sure.

"But you made it."

"We'll see. I certainly can't go back to the farm and give it to her just now." Cullen lifted a hand to point at all the sheep on the hill.

"You still have to give it to her." Gar set his jaw, mulish, and not even for the first time, he looked like a tiny, slimmer, more angular Rutherford. Between the round cheeks, the familiar nose, and the crook of his young jaw, he could have been any one of Cullen's siblings or cousins in high summer, if he'd had freckles or remnants of a sunburn and human ears.

Cullen sighed. So much for there being no agenda, here. "Why me?"

"Because Mamae's been sad, and you're why!"

He very nearly spluttered. _He'd_ been making _Sens_ sad? She'd shut down his perfectly reasonable questions and then turned her back on him last night! And yet he was to think she was the only injured party? Worse yet, by the Maker's very breath, had she told Gar of their troubles? It was a thing he had no business knowing or worrying over, and she surely knew that.

Gar's next words answered his train of questions:

"You shouted at her," the boy said. "You've been shouting at her a lot. I asked Mamae, but she says it's just because you don't feel well, and I shouldn't worry about it."

Cullen didn't even know what to say. That Gar had seen his temper slip because of the withdrawal was more than humiliating. He cast about for something, anything, to respond with.

At length, he settled on, "You're right, Gar. I've lost my temper much too easily of late. I'll apologize to her soon, I promise."

"And you'll give her the flowers."

He forced a laugh. It sounded dry, stuck in his throat. "No, I rather think that should be you. Gifts aren't apologies, and we must never use them as such. But you can tell her I helped you make the garland, if you like."

Gar frowned thoughtfully at him, but he took the flowers, at least. Cullen ruffled Gar's curls, and soon enough, he had been thanked and, more importantly, forgiven. It didn't take Gar long to grow bored of watching the sheep, either. 

Cullen kept an eye on the boy as he started back down the hill, turned a half dozen bronzy shades by the syrupy afternoon sunlight. Maker's breath, there were even wild elfroot plants that grew taller than Gar was.

Wherever they went after the foaling was done, Cullen hoped it would have more open plains and fewer bears. Maybe Lothering or some tiny town in the Gwaren teyrnir, near the Brecilian.

* * *

By the time Cullen returned to the farm, driving the sheep before him, the sun hung low in the sky and smoke poured from the big house's chimney. The farmhold had started supper by now, he knew, but there was no use going to the big house when the sheep needed corralling in their pen. That long task completed, he went to the well. 

The creak of the winch as he drew the bucket up grated less at his nerves than it had the day before. He gladly dumped the water over his head, then scrubbed at his face and arms. 

He was just making his way to their bunkhouse in the stable when he heard a soft, calm voice say, "You haven't eaten."

He turned, and was not surprised to find a short, slim shadow amidst low, dark dusk, barely more than the outline of a woman. The shadow's eyes glowed golden-green, but they did not illuminate her face.

Maker forgive him his lack of charity, but he felt strangely discomfited, to be alone out of doors with a woman who was only a dark figure, scarcely glimpsed. Her eyes did not set him at ease, particularly with the way he could see them narrow, and the light changed with them.

"Does this mean you've forgiven me for last night?" He asked.

"It means," Sens replied evenly, "that you have not eaten."

Cullen nodded. "I see. I… Maker's breath, Sens. I've been a cad to you these last few days, and I'm sorry."

Another pause. Sens tipped her head, considering. Her eyes narrowed again, eyelids surely drooping to half-mast.

After a long moment, she said, "I could have been kinder to you. I apologize that I wasn't." Another pause, and Sens's words were so soft she sounded almost tentative: "Is all forgiven between us?"

"It is," he said.

She looked at him for a long moment. The glow of her eyes never lessened, still burned and bored straight into him. Then, in the same quiet tones, she said, "I brought back some supper for you in the bunkhouse, if Gar hasn't eaten it."

Cullen nodded to show he'd heard. Maker, had he ever been so awkward around Sens? Whatever trick she'd used to put him at his ease, before — if there had been such a trick — wasn't working now. "Thank you," he told her, after clearing his throat. And then the mention of Gar reminded him: "Did he give you those flowers?"

Her lip curved up for an instant, just barely visible by the light her eyes reflected, and then her mouth went straight and neutral. "He did. Thank you. They were… lovely."

"It was his idea," Cullen said.

Another curve of her lip, and then she tilted her head in a 'let's go' gesture. She turned and moved away without saying anything, and Cullen followed. As they moved out of the shadows of the buildings, the moon shone down enough light for him to mostly see. There was a lithe, easy grace to her movements, as if she belonged beneath moon and stars, amid green things.

Or maybe a combination of lyrium and the entrancing sway of her hips had made a fool of him.

Gar hadn't eaten the meal Sens had saved. It was all simple fare — a bowl of stew kept warm over the fire, good, crusty bread wrapped in cloth, a fine sharp cheese — but the portions were generous. And after the day he'd had, that was all Cullen would have asked for: something fresh and filling.


	3. away (part two)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No apologies for this one, because it's got a scene you've been waiting for. Chapter Three ("go") is fighting me, but it should be up sometime soonish after the New Year. Maybe.

There was another foaling that night. Cullen slept so deeply, perhaps thanks to the exhaustion of a full belly, or perhaps because of his lyrium-fuelled restlessness through the day, that he didn't even hear the mare. He didn't stir until Gar pounced on their bed and began poking Cullen in the shoulder.

When he finally managed to crack his eyes open and look to his left, Gar's eyes were aglow in the darkness of the room. And yet the green light emanating from his face wasn't nearly so disturbing as when Sens's eyes flared.

"Papa, it's happening again," he said, and his voice was so high and excited that he was almost squeaking.

Cullen stared blankly at him for a moment before he finally heard the noise from the stable. Beside him, Sens had rolled onto her stomach and turned her face toward him. She mumbled something vague and incoherent, in a tone that Cullen was fairly certain meant lightning and death would surely follow if he didn't get the bouncing child away from their bed while she was trying to sleep.

"The horses," Cullen said, and then, in a more commanding tone, "Go and run for Master Dennet." He needed to find trousers.

He had just managed to dress himself and make his way to the stable when Gar arrived with a sleepy-looking Master Dennet.

It was a long labor. Cullen waited an hour or so, until Dennet shook his head. This was a breech birth, and the attempts to turn it would be ugly — Cullen sent Gar back along to bed. 

"Go and keep your mother company," he said, because he couldn't bring himself to say, _I think the mare will die_. Death was part of life, and the death of a mare in foaling was a possibility even someone who quite liked horses must learn to accept. But Gar was scarcely four years old; if mare, foal, or both died, Cullen would rather he learn it from a distance than see it.

* * *

Cullen, not Gar, watched Dennet shove his hands where no man's hands belonged. And even as he watched, he tried to keep the struggling mare calm. In the end, when the foal was free and the mare's bleeding did not cease, Cullen was the one to take up the knife.

"Should be me," Dennet said, even as he carried the foal away, wicking away fluid and the amniotic sack, checking it over for deformity or injury.

Cullen was quiet as he replied, "See to the living, or you'll lose both."

He wasn't sure how he was going to explain this to Gar in the morning. Had the boy ever encountered death? And he wasn't sure how he was going to explain how much _horse_ would be on the table. Perhaps best not to remark on it at all; if he didn't treat it as unusual, the boy might not think of it so.

But as he'd said: first, they had to see to the living. Dennet moved another mare and her own foal into the stall just next door, and then both he and Cullen coaxed the orphaned newborn to her. The foal was walking, but wobbly, and even in the short walk, Cullen twice had to lunge forward and make sure it didn't fall and break one of its spindly legs. Introducing a new foal to a tired mare seemed much more complicated than taking care of orphaned lambs had ever been, especially in the dead of night with only a pair of lanterns to guide them.

Dennet, her master and handler all the years of her life, could approach her and her own foal with ease. Cullen had to dodge three separate attempts to either step on him or kick him in the head, and she very nearly managed to bite him on the upper arm.

He felt his whole body relax, all the tension leaving him, when the orphan was at last allowed to suckle — though the mare rolled her eyes and made whickering sounds for the first few minutes.

That left them a rather more gruesome task, and the sooner over with, the better.

He and Dennet dragged the dead mare to the farm's butchery block. Cullen had spent his childhood watching his father butcher rams, and even learning parts of it. He'd persuaded his family to send him to the templars before he'd been old enough to really help, but between Dennet's years of experience, his own recollection, and the years of martial training, they made quick work of it. Easy to string her, and easy to apportion her, with the both of them hacking away.

"Take the morning," Dennet said to him once they'd stored the carved meat in a root cellar, all wrapped round in cloth.

It was far too close to dawn for his liking by the time he made his weary way back to the bunkhouse. Gar had crawled into bed with Sens, and she had shifted in bed so she could curl around him. With a heavy sigh, he unlaced his boots, then shucked his sweaty shirt. He didn't bother to take off his trousers, just slid into bed and turned himself so he could face both Sens and Gar.

The boy — his son, and Maker, what a mad thought that was, though it left him warm beneath his ribs — shifted uneasily in his sleep, and then all three of them were moving, until Gar was pressed close to Cullen, and Sens had leaned in toward Gar.

* * *

Cullen woke to weak morning light, streaming in through the window, screened by clouds and broken up by the shutters on the window. There was thin oilcloth on the window's inside that turned what light made it through a creamy gold. Come summer, he knew, Elaina would be pulling the cloth down and relying on the shutters.

It took him a rather shamefully long moment to realize that he was alone in the bed. He still felt warm, and loose-limbed. He rolled his shoulders and noted the stiffness; he hadn't worked himself quite that hard in some months, when Hadley had set him to running stairs in full armor, followed by three practice bouts. What, exactly, he'd done to earn the Knight-Captain's ire, Cullen didn't recall.

"I thought you'd sleep the day away," a soft, surprisingly dry voice said from somewhere across the room. "Elaina gave me half a day to make sure you were alright. Gar's in the hayloft with Seanna."

Cullen rolled over in the bed, turning to face the rest of the room. Sens had lit a small fire in the hearth and tucked some sort of tray in the cauldron over it, right next to a kettle. The creamy light turned her pale, silvering her black hair, and Cullen realized she was wearing an apron over a dress he didn't recognize. And it was most certainly a dress — too short for apprentice robes, too threadbare, with ancient, veiny lace at the collar.

"I'm fine," he said, sitting up. "Have you been there the whole morn?"

"In and out. She might have given me time, but I'm not fool enough to take it." A pause, and Sens's gaze swept to the side, as if she were trying to look over her shoulder without moving her head. He was still groggy enough that he had to put together the hair swept up into a bun that was neater on one side than the other, and the way, on the side she'd been looking at, it revealed her lobeless, pointy ears.

Surely Elaina wouldn't think her lazy for taking time that had been offered? But Cullen wasn't sure he dared fritter away the hours Dennet had granted. That, though, had naught to do with his race and more to do with the fact that he was half-stablehand, half-guest.

Cullen swung his legs over the edge of the bed and heaved himself to his feet. His knees didn't seem to want to support him. Indeed, they almost buckled. He caught himself just barely in time and forced himself to keep going, retreating behind the privacy screen to shuck his trousers and find fresh clothes.

"Why do you bother with that?" He heard Sens ask from the other side.

Not this again. Cullen rolled his eyes, and returned, "Why don't you?"

"It simply doesn't seem necessary." A pause, and Sens's voice turned just slightly wicked, though still dry. "You blush brightly, too. It makes you fun to tease."

Maker preserve him. The worst of it was when Sens got this way, there was no telling if she was being serious or making some manner of jest. And if he asked, she'd just tell him that everyone knew she had no sense of humor — in precisely the same bloody tone. If he allowed it, it would drive him quite mad.

Cullen waited until he had at least a new pair of trousers before poking his head out around the screen. He looked at Sens a moment, really taking her in, from her eyes to the way she'd wrapped her calves, half-hiding her boots. He let the silence linger until it was just one side of uncomfortable.

When Sens had turned her gaze to him, was giving him the same penetrating look he was giving her, though more unreadable — of course more unreadable; 'difficult' was her stock in trade — he asked, "And if I teased you back? What then?"

"How would you know you'd succeeded?" she asked, and though her mouth stayed in a straight line, her eyes glinted with good humor as she added, "I'm too dark to blush."

He had no comeback for that, so he dressed the rest of the way in silence, and then retrieved his breakfast from the fire. Biscuits and a rasher of, if he had to guess, horse meat, with gravy from the fat. It'd stick to his ribs, and at the smell of the gravy, he found himself hungry. He tore into biscuit and meat, dipping both in the gravy, scarfing it all down and following it with weak tea.

Sens watched him, and there was no mistaking that she felt cautious, though her face remained an expressionless mask. He saw the way her eyes narrowed, considering. Saw the way she tilted her head as she watched him.

At length, she reached out and placed the back of one slim hand against his forehead, peering into his eyes as she did. For a moment, little more than a heartbeat, the mask slipped, and he saw naked concern. Cullen caught her by the wrist, struck suddenly at how slender her arm was, how easily he encircled it within his own grasp, and tugged her hand away.

"I"m fine," he told her again, this time firmly.

"Dennet thought you were ill." A delicate, careful pause, and then she asked, "It's the lyrium, isn't it? That's why you look so terrible."

"We call it a crash. Give me an hour, and I'll level out for a week or so." And then he'd need it again. The euphoric high, the drive to do things, the way the whole world turned syrupy and perfect. That day would exact its price the following morning, and the whole cycle would start anew.

Until, at least, the days came that he couldn't continue. Cullen pushed the thought away and let go of Sens's wrist. He turned back to his his breakfast, but he couldn't seem to shake the awareness of her so close, or the bleak, gray picture of his eventual end.

Commingled desire for her and disquiet at his future both spoiled his appetite, and Cullen shoved the plate away, a good quarter of his biscuit still covered in gravy.

"Thank you for..." He said as he stood, but Sens just twitched her head. She didn't quite shake it, but it was still a denial.

"Back to bed," she told him. "The farm has no real need of you, in any road." Her mouth implied an upward curve without any sign of a true smile. "You should have heard Ellar cursing your name when he did your chores in your place. It seems Elaina is grown spoiled by how much water you carry every morning."

Well, at least someone had profited by his seeking surcease from his frustrations. Still, he was all too aware of his own reasons for his busy mornings. There was no helping the blush, no stopping it, and Sens arched her eyebrows at him. Then her brows drew down and she stepped closer, feeling at his face again.

"Is the flush part of this 'crash,' or are you simply embarrassed?" Her knuckles drifted down from his forehead across his cheek, and to his amazement, he could feel his face grow even hotter. Surely his head would catch fire or he would faint if this kept up. Maker's breath, there was even a patch of heat on the back of his neck. "You don't feel feverish, but I mislike how drawn your eyes look."

He stumbled over words, coming out with, "I — no — Sens, it's really —" before finally saying, a third time, "I'm _fine_. I promise. Give me an hour's rest, and I'll be —"

"Having another hour's rest." Sens cupped his cheek, as if that was at all an appropriate gesture — or perhaps it was? Matters between them were so complicated, so interwoven between longings and lies, that he wasn't entirely sure — and then splayed her hand on the center of his chest. He could feel his skin going warm where she touched.

She gave him a small push, not even enough to force him back a step without his cooperation. And yet Cullen backed up a step. He knew she was small, even for an elf, knew she was as young as he, but it didn't seem to register often to him. Between the way she carried herself and the way she wore her face like a mask, he almost forgot her height.

He was certainly reminded now; something about the angle of her head, or maybe the fact that she was pitting her fragile strength against his solid weight, was making the difference in their sizes much more obvious.

"Go," she said.

Perhaps he was a fool, but he went.

* * *

He finally roused himself again around noon. Sens was nowhere to be seen, though she'd left bread, cheese, and a tall stein of something that he hoped wasn't beer on the table. When he rolled out of bed, he found his legs willing to bear his weight. He didn't shake or stumble as he made his way to the table.

His tongue itched as soon as he picked uip the stein. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rose, and that, combined with the itch, told him that magic had been used. He hardly needed the templar training: the mug was unnaturally cold.

The woman was maddening. Yes, a thoughtful enough gesture, but careless, too. What if someone else had discovered it? Was she so free with her magic outside their rooms?

The sudden burst of anger, there and gone again in a flash, didn't stop him from flipping the lid with his thumb and taking first a sip, and then another. He all but sighed in pleasure; beer and ale and wine had oft graced the table at the Circle, with water or juice for the children, and occasionally milk. Cider had been a rarity, and this was the rarest of the stuff: sweet cider. No bite of alcohol to it, just the taste of apple and pear, crisp and easy in his mouth.

He was just rising from the table when Garahel burst into their bunkhouse. He'd rolled his breeches up to his knees and carried his shoes in one hand. Mud dotted one cheek and was spattered all over his bare feet, up his calves.

"Papa! You're awake! Mamae said you might still be asleep."

"And so you come pounding in here like a herd of druffalo?" Cullen reached out to tousle Gar's hair, resting his palm heavily on the boy's head. "I'm glad I woke when I did. Something very good must have happened."

At this, Gar's eyes widened, rather comically. He began to nod his head up and down, more vigorous a gesture than Cullen had yet seen from him. He must have learned it off Seanna.

"There's a new foal! And Seanna showed me the way down to the creek!"

Cullen forced himself to smile. Still, all he could imagine was Gar tumbling headlong into the water and being carried off by a strong current. At this rate, he was practically turning into Sens with all his fears of some ill fate befalling their son.

"And is the creek why you're all over mud? Did you take your shoes off to go wading?"

Gar stared up at him, and his brow furrowed. The gleeful expression turned serious, and he said, in a tone as flat as if he thought the answer should be obvious, "No, Papa, I needed to feel the ground."

Cullen stared for a moment. Of course Gar thought he'd made perfect sense, when, indeed, he made none at all. Still, Cullen crouched down and asked, "Right, then. D'you think you can feel the ground if I drop you feet-first into the bathing tub?"

"No," Gar replied, matter-of-fact. "I have to be on the ground, Papa."

"Oh, I see. Well, it's too early in the year for you to go about with no shoes on. And Sen — I mean your mother won't like you running about covered in mud. Let's get you cleaned off, shall we?"

* * *

After he'd got Gar mostly cleaned off and in fresher clothes, Cullen sent the boy on his way. Gar was quick to be gone, after squirming, wriggling, and making some truly impressive faces throughout his impromptu scrubdown. He did at least pull his boots back on before he went, though his ears drooped as Cullen bent to lace and tie them.

"No more feeling the ground until bedtime," Cullen told him, but Gar was off like arrow from string. 

A week and more of freedom had suited him; he wasn't quite so alien as Sens, but he seemed like a small, wild creature, constantly running about with Seanna and looking at things. Then again, Cullen was fairly certain that any boy under the age of about fifteen was, in fact, a tiny wild beast whose parents had only half-tamed, and they were lucky he was only _looking_.

Cullen pulled his own boots and a tunic on, and then headed out from the bunkhouse. He found Dennet in the Redcliffe paddock, gazing critically at the new foal and its grafted dam.

"Take some of that bloody horse meat out to the smaller farms around here. Get with Rickard, he'll show you how we deliver it," Dennet said, never looking away from the foal. It was spindly-legged and mostly interested in jostling its adopted sibling out of the way so it could nurse, which meant that both foals spent most of their time avoiding being bitten.

Cullen almost asked if anybody would even want the meat, but he shut his mouth on the question. This wasn't the Bannorn. Fereldans might not love being offered charity, but they weren't fools, either. They'd take any meat offered, and swear loyal friendship in exchange. And they'd keep those vows. Come harvest time, Dennet's farm would see an inrush of goods in kind, and all would consider the debt paid.

Instead, he asked, "The foal is for the arl?"

"The mare was his. She had a good gait. Natural; I didn't teach it to her. I suppose I'll have to hope this one takes after her. Elsewise the arl's wife is out a favorite riding horse, and Maker knows we can't have that." Dennet spat.

Cullen didn't so much as raise an eyebrow at the casual disrespect with which Dennet spoke of the arlessa. She was, after all, Orlesian, and her kin had been the ones to occupy Redcliffe arling. Instead, he replied, "I don't suppose we can. I'll go find Rickard."

"See you do." But as Cullen turned to go, Dennet said, "I've heard there's some to-do up in Redcliffe. The innkeep is saying an elven blood-mage called up the soul of his dead mother and berated him until he gave her all his gold."

Well, at least the horsemaster did him the courtesy of not asking him if he knew anything about it.

Cullen just said, "I'd have liked to see that."

"Hah. Me too, lad. Go get Rickard. And keep an eye out for blood mages, eh? Maybe don't carry any gold."

"Lucky for me, my mother's still alive," Cullen said, and left the paddock.

* * *

The ride to the surrounding farms went easily enough, and the other farmers accepted the meat as graciously as Cullen had expected. Indeed, the only thing about the trip that made it at all of note was the way Rickard asked question after question. With a surprisingly un-Fereldan delicacy, he danced around his point, darting in and almost making it several times over before shying away.

What Rickard wanted to know — and was asking with easy pincushion questions about just where Cole and Sen had been before — was why a red-blooded Fereldan man had taken a foreign-seeming elf under his protection. And Cullen had no answer for Rickard. At least, no answer that wasn't, "She's a mage, and I a fallen templar."

And even if he dared say that, it carried its own slew of implications that weren't even true.

As it was, Cullen found Sens taking down the wash in one of the meadows near his favorite pasture. She was pulling down armfuls of cloth, folding them, and packing them away in baskets. Every movement was swift, efficient. Deft.

If they had been as they seemed, Cullen knew he would have wrapped an arm around her waist, dropping kisses on the crown of her head before moving on, playful, to her ears and neck. The urge was there; it would be so easy. And yet Cullen knew that while she would give every appearance of relaxing into his embrace, it would be feigned. She might even hate him for the necessity of it. He had never once seen her be affectionate with anyone who wasn't one of the neonates. 

Rumor in the Tower even held that she had once mocked a man, quite cruelly, for bringing her a bouquet of flowers. Did he think, she had supposedly asked, that she held any tenderness in her heart for him? Was he so great a fool that he had permitted himself to form an attachment? Better he keep the flowers himself, then, as a reminder, for if she accepted them, she would use them as kindling in the neonates' lessons.

Today, Sens would save her mockery for later. But he had no doubt that it would be savage.

"We need to speak," Cullen said. "We may need to move on sooner than expected."

Sens arched a brow at him, but she swiftly smoothed the expression away and stood on the tips of her toes to mouth a kiss against his cheek. "Must we?" She asked, and her voice was low, rough with something he hadn't heard before. It warmed him low in his belly to hear it.

"Rickard's asking uncomfortable questions, and Lloyd has named you a blood-mage who stole all his coin." Cullen sighed. "The Chantry guardians in town will be oathbound to send for a mage-hunter, mad as his story sounds."

Sens stared up at him. Her expression was either grave or calm; he couldn't name the difference. She asked only, "Whither next?"

"Lothering, I should think, or mayhaps Gwaren." If they went to Gwaren, they could take ship quite easily should it prove needful, though where in the world they might fly to, he had no idea.

"Not Amaranthine?" That they would not go to Denerim seemed settled without words between them. After all, they had promised Gar.

"It's the second largest city in Ferelden, and one of the first places mage hunters search. Gwaren is far enough from the Tower that if they link a maleficar in Redcliffe to an escaped apprentice... Well, they won't look there. Denerim, mayhap, but no one in their right mind goes further south."

"Can we not last seven days? We promised Master Dennet —"

"I know what we promised the horsemaster," he snapped. After a moment, and at Sens's briefly widened eyes, he sighed and said, "I apologize. I am simply concerned. I'll talk to Dennet tonight, after dinner. Will you tell Gar?"

Sens tipped her head on one side and considered for a moment. She shook her head. "Best not to tell him now. He'll tell Seanna, or mention it when I'm about my work. We can tell him the evening before we're set to leave." A pause, and then she added, her eyes glinting with her humor again, "That way, he can only droop his ears for a few hours."

* * *

He found Dennet in the yearling barn, checking the horses over for injury. Spring was a good time in Ferelden, but the nigh-constant mist of rain made for sticky mud — rather than frozen mud — and that could be a danger to the spindly-legged younger horses. Maker knew he'd got his boots stuck often enough as a child, on the occasions he'd stepped wrong.

Cullen watched the man work for a few minutes. He was as sure with the horses as Cullen's father had been with sheep and as Cullen himself was with a blade. This was someone Cullen could have admired, in another life: a man content to live simply, doing what he knew best, and loving what he did. Stern, and taciturn, in the Fereldan fashion, but not without kindness, also in the Fereldan way.

It would be a true pity to leave this place.

Cullen had expected Dennet to be angry at the loss of a stablehand, but he took the news with the same equanimity with which he'd taken near everything else. The man seemed utterly unable to be distressed. Given he'd kept his cool in the midst of a breach birth, it wasn't much of a surprise to Cullen.

What _was_ a surprise was the way Dennet gave him a long, considering look. It was the same sort of look that the First Enchanter wore, the same kind of look that Sens used against the world. Cullen found this last scrutiny just as uncomfortable as the first time Dennet had done this.

"If word's reached us of a blood mage," Dennet said at last, long and slow, "and we're so far south and west of Redcliffe, then there's already mage hunter in town, I'd expect." 

Cullen felt cold roll down his spine, even as the hairs on the back of his neck arose. The hair on his arms soon joined it. The man knew.

"Funny thing, though. The way the Chantry talks about maleficarum, I'd expect some wild-eyed madwoman with a pointy knife she used all the time. Your witch wife is using her magic to stay beautiful, mayhap, but she's scarce been a threat." A pause, and almost absently, Dennet added, "Don't think I've ever even seen her with a knife."

Sweet Andraste singing in the hills. It was like somebody had found a way to shove a chunk of ice into his belly, and the cold was spreading outward from there, like fever chills. 

Witch wife. Maker damn his soul to the Void. Well, at least Dennet had believed a _piece_ of the story, he supposed. Pity he'd been more convincing as a lovelorn fool than Sens had been as an ordinary woman. He had a brief urge to correct Dennet, to point out that blood magic couldn't be used to preserve beauty, but he managed not to.

All Cullen said aloud — though he was sure his every horrified thought had blown across his face — was, "Then we might not have a week."

"It sounds you don't." Dennet reached out and clasped a hand on Cullen's shoulder. He squeezed, and his grip was tight, knuckles and fingers thick. "Give me your word you've harmed none, and I'll aid you as I can."

"You'd trust my word?" He probably looked incredulous. He definitely had to click his mouth closed from where it'd hung open.

Dennet raised an eyebrow. "Is there some reason I shouldn't? You've done your share of work and more without complaint, been where I needed you."

And had lied, through his teeth, every minute of every day, about who he was and where he was from and the people he'd brought onto that farm. But he said none of that, and Dennet didn't accuse him of it.

Instead, he said, "I give you my word we've brought harm to no one. Andraste's pyre, we didn't take coin off Lloyd." After a moment, Cullen added, "And Sen doesn't speak to the dead."

"So it was Lloyd, then." Dennet grunted, then knelt to check another foal's legs. "I'll have you out of here as soon as I can. You've been good for the farm, Cole."

"I should tell you, that's not my —"

Dennet cut him off, standing abruptly and turning around. "Boy, will you never be done being a fool? Far as I'm ever to know, your name is Cole, and your woman was Sen, and the boy I scarce saw had some elf name or other."

Right. Of course. Cullen's face turned hot, but Dennet waved a hand. "Off with you. Dinner's soon, and Seanna and the boy are up in the hills somewhere, I think. See to it they don't get carried off by bears."

* * *

The next couple of days passed all too quickly. He still rarely saw Sens throughout the day, but he tried to keep Gar close by him. If the boy sensed anything amiss, he said nothing of it, but Cullen woke more than once to Gar wriggling his way into their bed. Sens never seemed to mind; she rolled over and tucked the boy's head under her chin, but it meant that Cullen ended up with tiny, cold feet in his ribs.

The second morning after they'd decided to leave, Ellar actually laughed at him. "You've got rings under your eyes like a raccoon," he said. "Hope she was worth it. We're laying stone for a wall up in the northwestern pasture today."

Cullen narrowed his eyes at Ellar, but followed him up the hills anyway. Between dragging the rocks on a sledge and then placing them to fill gaps in the wall, he was soon sweaty from springtime sun. By afternoon, when Ellar was ready to call it done, his entire body had the loose ache of a good constitutional.

Naturally, both Seanna and Gar were waiting for him by the gate.

Gar broke into a chubby-cheeked smile at the sight of him, complete with dimples. It squeezed something in Cullen's chest, and Cullen smiled back.

"Papa! Mistress Mari sent us to find you," Gar said, voice solemn. "She said you were doing good work for Master Dennet."

"Just carrying stones," Cullen told him. "What does Mari need with me?"

"It's about your _wife_ ," Seanna sing-songed, expression sly, though she turned red when Cullen looked at her.

"Is something wrong? Is someone hurt?" He demanded. But no, Gar and Seanna would be more in a panic if something had gone wrong. She couldn't have used magic. He forced his lungs to keep his breath even and asked, more calmly, "Where are they?"

"Mistress Mari and Mamae are in the big house," Gar said.

Cullen nodded and moved to pass them, tousling Gar's hair as he did so. The boy laughed, and then followed Seanna to wherever it was the children went in the day.

* * *

He found Mari in the back of the main farmhouse, in front of a closed door. She wiped her hands on her apron, resting one palm for a moment at the too-round swell of her belly, and then rested a hand against her back, as if she were sore.

"Good," she said, "you're here." And with that, she bent to pick up one of a pair of buckets by her feet. Mari handed him a bucket of water and jerked her chin toward the door. "You can damn well take care of this yourself."

Cullen stared back at her. "Er, what?"

"I like the chit well enough," Mari snapped, "but if that knife ear thinks I've time to indulge her vanity, she'll soon learn elsewise. You go in and handle it, or Maker hear me, I'll give her a tongue thrashing she won't forget."

"Right," Cullen said, far too startled and confused to take immediate offense, even as he decided not to wonder what vanity had to do with well water. At least Sens hadn't been discovered as an apostate, he supposed, by anyone other than Dennet.

He opened the door, one-handed, and then shut it, and began to understand. Sens was kneeling in a small tub of water. One slim hand held masses of dark, soaked hair on the top of her head, while the other scrubbed suds into it.

Even with the shrouded light that broke through shutter and oilcloth, her skin seemed to glow. Her back — straight, slender, and the frail-looking lines of her spine had him swallowing nerves — was to him, but then she turned her head.

"Cullen," she said, and her voice was soft. "I see Mari lost patience with me." A pause, as she made a very faint expression of distaste that vanished quickly. "I needed to scrub the grease from my hair. Will you help me rinse it?"

"You — I — she called you vain," he said, and then realized exactly what else Mari had called her.

He'd known the bigotry was coming. The Circles didn't tolerate such talk, but Thedas was Thedas. Still, it felt a betrayal, to hear it from the mouth of a friend's wife, in the home of a man he liked and respected. How would Sens feel, to know what she'd been called?

"And every other name she knows, I suspect," Sens said. She sounded as if she cared exactly as much about Mari's opinion as she did of nearly everyone else's. "Come here and help me."

His feet carried him forward, automatically, at the tone. "I've, er, never..."

"What? Never washed your hair?" She aimed a look he suspected was critical at the top of his head, though she had to crane her neck to do it. That, combined with the way she was looking over her shoulder, could not have been comfortable. She dropped it quickly enough.

He felt his face color. "I've never washed anyone else's."

Sens gave him a shrug. "And you won't yet. I only need rinse the soap out."

Cullen had not returned to the farm with this in mind, but it couldn't be too difficult, could it? He shifted where he stood, and only barely kept water from sloshing on out of the bucket. "This will be cold," he warned.

"Wait," Sens said, and abruptly stood. 

She didn't even drop her hands from her hair to use the edges of the tub for leverage. She simply rose, smoothly and swiftly, from where she'd knelt. Water cascaded off her, but clung to the subtle curves of her skin, in the hollows of her shoulderblades and the little divot at the end of her spine. It dripped down the back of her neck, and soap followed it.

Cullen jerked his eyes back up to her hair, and consigned all thoughts regarding the way even at her palest, she was golden, or how some parts of her were vastly paler than others, to the corner of his mind he indulged in the mornings. He stepped a little closer to the tub and its white wisps of steam that utterly failed to obscure anything important. When he breathed in, the air was thick with the scent of the flower she so often smelled of.

"This should be easier on you," Sens said.

Well, she couldn't always be sensible, he supposed. Or perhaps having the modesty beaten out of her — possibly literally, though he hoped not — had rather skewed her perspective on such matters.

A few moments later, moments in which he had surely gone insane, he found himself lifting the bucket and pouring its contents over her head. He did it as slowly as possible, in several short passes, and Sens adjusted her hair, rubbing at her scalp and fluffing the strands until the suds ran away from her head and down the rest of her hair. There was enough of that, he realized, that he needed a second bucket.

"S-sorry, just ran out of water," he said. "I'll be right back."

"I'll wait," she replied.

Mari had gone by the time Cullen was out the door. She had left a second bucket, though, and for that he was a little grateful. It didn't stop him hearing those words again, in her exasperated voice, and they filled his gut with coals. 

He returned with the water, and set about helping Sens to rinse the body of her hair free of soap. He did so slowly, and was unable to avoid looking down. Was unable to avoid seeing her — in detail, rather than the dim outline of her body he saw and felt through her nightdress. Maker's breath, she was so close, and the scent of flowers rose from the steam and her skin.

After scant minutes had gone by, he set the bucket down, and Sens pulled that thick, sodden mass over her shoulder. He towered over her enough that he could see her quick, dark hands begin to wring the water from it.

"Thank you," she said, without turning her head again.

"It, er, wasn't any trouble." A droplet of water slid down her back. Cullen's eyes followed it all the way down, past the sharp angles of her shoulder blades, along the ridges and valleys carved by her spine, until it reached the divot just above her — he cleared his throat and looked away.

Sens turned her head, just slightly pivoting, and then she turned to face him completely. Her gaze sought his, and after a moment, Cullen returned it, careful not to look below her face.

Then she tilted her head. Her lips parted, only a few inches away from his.

Cullen realized he was leaning in. Just a little. Just enough to mirror her. Still, clearly inappropriate as it was, he couldn't bring himself to back away.

And then Sens said, "Antivan and Tevene, one in some places, the other in others, and among the family, we mixed both together and added in Elvish."

"Er, what?" Had he gone mad? Had she? What was she even…? He blinked a moment, trying to clear the fog of her — of her body, of her closeness, of the way her markings dotted her collarbones, of the way he could just — and follow whatever it was she had been trying to tell him.

"My first language. You wanted to know," she said, as evenly as if she wasn't even aware of their positions. Her eyes dropped to his mouth, just for a moment.

"Oh," Cullen said, and knew he sounded a fool. "Er, thank you," he added, when she seemed to be waiting for some response.

Then he kissed her.

Her mouth was soft beneath his, lips dry and warm. They yielded to his touch, parting beneath the pressure of his own lips, and Sens raised her hand, tangling it in the hair on the back of his head. He bent himself toward her, just enough to ease the kiss, and then she touched the tip of her tongue to his lower lip. Before he could think about it, he gripped her waist in both hands and stepped in closer, and widened the parting of his lips so she could tease her tongue within.

She did so swiftly, gently, and he soon found himself tilting his head to give her more access, to let her control the kiss while he passed one hand from her waist up her back, feeling the knobs of her spine and stopping at her neck. One of her hands pushed against his cheek, even as her mouth moved against his. Every touch was like sparks of lightning magic thundering down his back, lighting fire in his stomach, but it was warm, too, and she was so gentle with him. He spared no thought before he dug one of his hands into her sodden hair and began to press his tongue back against hers.

Behind him, there came a creaky groan, and Cullen half turned. In the doorway stood Gar with an armload of linens. It was likely just a pair of towels, but it looked like a huge stack.

Gar looked first from Cullen then toward Sens, little though he could likely see. He tilted his head — a gesture that reminded Cullen of Sens — first one way and then another. He was holding onto the linens so tightly, Cullen realized, that his little hands had turned pale.

"Mamae? Are you hurt?" Gar asked, his voice tight-strung with what might have been anger or fear.

"No, Gar," Sens said. She stepped a little closer behind Cullen, as if to use his bulk to shield herself from prying eyes. It was, Cullen realized, the first sign of modesty he'd ever seen from her. "I'm not hurt."

He turned his head to watch her, and saw her draw her hair forward, over her shoulders, to better screen her upper body, though the pale curves of her breasts and the dark, thorn-like markings on her collarbones were still just barely visible past the wet strands.

Some part of Cullen burned, in the same way he'd been affronted that Sens thought he might allow their boy to be hurt. And yet surely it was reasonable — Gar had grown up in the stews of the alienage and didn't remember his parents. He might have seen passion, but he likely hadn't seen love or tenderness in any of the couplings Cullen hoped the boy hadn't witnessed.

He kept his voice gentle as he said, "I would never hurt you or your mother, Gar. Did you come to see us to bring us those towels?" 

"Mistress Mari sent me with these," Gar said, "she said you'd need them.'

"Thank you, Gar," Sens said. She curved her mouth up for a moment. "Will you please bring them to me? I should dry off."

He crossed the room with the towels, and Sens reached out an arm for them. Within moments, she'd wrapped one around herself. The moment she was mostly covered — save those dark, choppy thorns on her collarbones — she knelt and kissed Gar on his forehead. She tugged with one hand at his long, pointed ears.

"All is quite well for now, Gar," she said, low and gentle. "Now go run and find Seanna again, hm? It may be that Elaina wants you to bring in the sweet cider or help her mix up the bread dough."

Gar's gaze travelled between them again before he nodded, solemn. But Cullen could see the wariness in his face as he made his way to the door.

"That may be some trouble. Shall I... try and explain, later, as much as he's ready to understand?" Maker's breath, what would he even say? What was there to be said? That matters between him and Sens were ever changing?

"Just reassure him, I think," Sens said. She stepped into his space again, twining her arms around his neck, and stood on the tips of her toes to press another kiss to his mouth.

He allowed himself only a few moments to return the kiss. There was too much else to be done to prepare them to leave Dennet's farm. Much though he'd like to spend his afternoon wrapped up in her, he broke away from Sens. He rubbed his thumb along her cheek, pressing the pad against her cheekbone, and smiled down at her. 

And, in much the same movement Gar had made — Maker's breath, he was learning so much from the both of them, and so quickly — Sens tilted her head for a moment. Her green eyes had gone dark with... something, though they still regarded him almost coolly, and though her expression was as unreadable as ever, she seemed a little breathless. 

"Go," she told him. 

He went.

* * *

He found Gar and Seanna in the up garden, moving amongst the neat rows of plants with tasks clearly in mind. They each carried a basket, and Gar was filling his with pea pods. Seanna was filling hers with an assortment of herbs in neat little piles — elfroot, rosemary, thyme.

Cullen watched this all for a moment. Something about what he'd shared with Sens in the bathing room was needling at him. He needed to find the time to think about it, to run through it in his head and figure out what had driven them so he could steer away from it for a little while. Now, especially, he needed the mental discipline.

Especially if he needed to reassure Gar. But Gar looked happy and unconcerned, so Cullen turned aside and headed toward the foaling barn and their bunkhouse.

Within, he began to re-assemble their bags. Thanks to Sens's laundry duties, he was able to pack almost everything. The rest, they'd wash in their own basin tonight and let dry by the fire.

By the time the bell rang with its call to dinner, he had his armor ready, his sword sharpened, and most of their items packed. If necessary, if the itinerant templar arrived before they expected, they would be ready, or mostly so.

It did not stop dinner from being an excruciation.

Cullen spent the meal waiting for something to go wrong. Either Gar would slip, or _he_ would, or Rickard would say something stupid. What he ate — when he managed to eat at all — he didn't taste, nor did he even really notice the food at board.

All through dinner, people shot worried looks at him, and Cullen almost wondered what he looked like. He knew he wasn't flushed anymore, but he'd spent the last pair of days abusing his constitution. Were his eyes still bloodshot from lyrium? Dark-shadowed from ill sleep? Another thing to worry about, if a templar should arrive too soon; any of the ORder would recognize the signs of a recent dose as easily as he would sense the way Sens could touch mana.

Maker's breath. Would he never be done deceiving, worrying that his deception would be discovered? A foolish wish. He had made his choice when he led Sens from the Circle Tower. This was the life allotted to apostates.

That thought rung in his head with a sort of slow growing horror. Apostates were all but forced to lie, to steal, to live out their lives in endless flight, always looking over their shoulders. Was this the life he'd condemned Gar to? Had he, in trying to do the right thing, done something unforgivable?

What little appetite he'd had vanished. He forced himself to sit through the meal, answering questions as they were put to him and offering smiles where they seemed likely.

It was Elaina who brought up, it would seem, their excuse for escape. She was looking at the table, at Ellar and Mari, at Rickard and his wife, whose name Cullen still hadn't picked up, and then at Seanna.

"Dennet, have we heard from Edwin?" She asked.

Dennet paused in the midst of taking a bite of chicken. The leg was halfway between the table and his mouth, and he shot a look at Elaina that said, quite plainly, that he hadn't expected her to ask him that just then.

"No," he said, and returned to his chicken leg.

It was Ellar who joined in. "You should send another letter, then. Mayhaps the first one was lost."

"Don't much see how it matters. He's bound to be busy as we are with his own foaling, and those Chargers have to be tricky."

The pieces fell into place. Cullen found himself leaning forward, over the table, and asking, "You mean Edwin, Arl Howe's horsemaster?"

"Him and no other." This came from Seanna, who flashed Cullen a smile. "Da's working on a horse trade with him, and seeing what comes of mixing the breeds."

At this, Sens looked up. There was somewhat calculating in her expression as she asked, "If you have need of someone to carry a letter to Amaranthine…"

"Well I'll not gainsay putting Rickard and my three oldest in the bunkhouse for a spell," said Mari. "He's worse than a mule, and I sleep poor enough as it is, these nights."

Rickard's flush darkened, shifting from embarrassment to anger.

Dennet eyed her, and then his eyes flicked to Cullen. His look was canny as it swept from one part of he table to the other. All he said was, "We'll see."

* * *

Cullen took Gar back to the bunkhouse when dinner was over, while Sens stayed with the other women. He sat Gar down with the primer, listening as the boy worked his way through one of the harder stories to read. No singing lesson tonight, he didn't think, but he was pleased that he didn't have to correct Gar as much as before on his reading. The improvement was slight — it was likely that Gar was simply memorizing part of the primer's text — but still present, and he found it heartening.

After the lesson, and after Cullen packed the primer away, he turned to Gar. "Do you want to go visit the new foal?"

A foolish question. He might as well not have asked. Gar hopped down from the bed and sprinted toward the bunkhouse door. Cullen cleared his throat, watching as Gar skidded to a stop with his hand on the doorknob.

"You need your shoes to go in the stables. Maker only knows what's on the floor there," he reminded Gar. The young elf's ears drooped, naturally, but he pulled his boots on and allowed Cullen to tie them. Cullen made sure that his fingers worked the knots slowly and clearly; if Gar was reading, he needed to learn to knot and unknot his own boots.

Once shod, they made their way out the interior door and toward the foaling stable. Gar was usually quiet, but he seemed almost awkward, always on the edge of voicing some thought, but always shying back away. He was still distressed at what he'd seen earlier, no doubt.

Cullen gave Gar a boost so that he could see over the stall door and look in on the grafted mare and her two foals. They were still spindly legged, but this time they were sleepier rather than trying to bite and shove their way clear to the teat. It was a sweet sight, he supposed, and it seemed to cheer Gar up.

Still, the boy was subdued. So once they were back in the bunkhouse — and of course Sens still wasn't back — Cullen finally said, "What's wrong, Gar? You're even quieter than usual.'

Garahel spent several moments looking at his fingers, his feet, the fire grate, and the floor. He let the silence drag on and on until, at last, he evidently worked up the courage to ask, "Mamae really isn't hurt?"

Ah. So that was the source of the trouble. Cullen looked down at Gar, saw the way he was looking back up at him with wide, anxious eyes. They were stretched in his face, their whites far too visible for his expression to mean anything but terror, or near enough to it to make no difference. His round cheeks were pale, too, washed out where the golden curls usually made them look darker.

Cullen turned to face Gar fully and then crouched, bringing himself down to Gar's eye level.

"She's fine, Gar. She wasn't in any pain. Do you… understand what you saw?"

"I know I saw it before." The weight his young, high voice placed on that last word meant that he must be speaking of the alienage. And given how much Gar hated even the thought of that place, even now, Cullen once doubted very much that he'd seen anything of kindness or affection in coupling. "I know it makes girls cry. I don't want Mamae to cry." A pause, and Gar's voice turned accusing. "You _love_ Mamae. Why would you do something that would —"

Well, that pretty much answered the question of what Gar knew. He found himself half wishing that the boy had been born anywhere but the Denerim Alienage. Highever and Lothering had no such places.

"Gar. Gar, look at me." When he had his son's full attention, Cullen reached out and cupped the round, too-pale cheek. Now that he was so close, he could more easily see the wet glint in the green eyes. "I wasn't hurting your mother. I would never do anything I knew would hurt either of you. I'm never going to do anything to make her cry."

"But —"

"I understand you haven't seen it be a good thing, but Sens and I were simply —" He was justifying himself to a four year old. For that matter, how did he even begin to...? With a sigh, he tried for simple frankness. "It's called kissing, Gar. It's a thing grown-ups do to make each other feel nice. And it feels much nicer if they… care for each other."

Explaining the difference between himself and the men Gar would have seen pressing advantage would be a much longer conversation on this matter than he was willing to have.

"And you love Mamae."

"I… care about her, yes," Cullen allowed. "It's too still soon to say anything more of the matter." He paused a moment, to give weight to his words, and added, "But Gar, however your mother and I feel about each other, we both love you. Very much."

Gar accepted this with a nod. "I love you, too. Both of you."

"Very much?" Cullen asked, risking enough to tease the boy. 

But Gar nodded solemnly. "Very much. I'm glad you weren't hurting Mamae."

"She's a grown woman, Garahel. She's not as easy to hurt as you might think." But even as he said it, he found himself doubting it. Between the sharp, thornlike markings on her face and collar bones, and the way she hid from her past, the way she watched the people around her… He had his suspicions that she had been badly wounded, and that the hurt was echoing yet within her. The Tower had forever altered her — and he was lucky she was not entirely destroyed inside.

Was this what happened to all mages, eventually? Was it only the elves, or only the women, or was it simply the nature of the Circle to erode people, until they were hollow husks of what they could have been? He, too, was forever changed, though he hoped it was a change for the better.

Better, at least until his end. He looked forward again, down the long tunnel of years, and had to swallow back bile at the thought of what he would become. Confused. Delirious. Unable to see the difference between dreaming and waking. Parroting pieces of the Chant like a child.

Surely there was some way to escape that fate, as he had pushed Sens to escape her own.

"Mamae has a de-li-cate con-sti-tution," Gar said, sounding almost pious and clearly repeating something he'd heard somewhere. And then he added, as if to explain, "Mistress Elaina says so."

"Elves are very fragile," Cullen agreed. "But your mother was hardy enough to survive the Tower."

Gar's mouth curved up in a smile. By the time they returned to the bunkhouse, Sens had also arrived. She was out of the unfamiliar dress and back in her familiar, too-thin, too-pale shift. Her expression was, as usual, impossible to read, but as her eyes lit on them, he saw them warm, saw her mouth relax just a fraction.

"Are you ready to go to bed now?" She asked Gar, moving to the cot to turn down his blankets.

Gar's ears drooped, but he gave a solemn nod and moved, with heavy footsteps that made Cullen have to hide his smile in his cheek, to clamber onto his cot. Sens tucked him in with the same, brisk, efficient movements he'd long seen of her. But she let her hand linger on Gar's cheek, traced the thin edge of his ear before briefly tugging it.

"Sweet dreams, Gar," she said, before kissing him on the forehead and moving away, allowing Cullen to bid him good night.

* * *

Cullen shucked down to his breeches and climbed into bed after Sens. She curled toward him, much as she had curled toward Gar the morning before. She lay on her side and simply looked at him.

It would never cease to amaze him, how such a silent woman could say so much without even bothering to change her expression. Her eyes glinted green, surprisingly bright in the dim room. He spared a foolish moment to wonder if she could read in the dark before he stretched an arm out.

Within moments, she was a long line of warmth against his body, her head pillowed on his chest. Her soft hair tickled at his skin, but it felt surprisingly good. Cullen lifted his hand, pressing it lightly against her head, stroking her head and hair.

"News of a templar worries you," she said, voice quiet. Across from them, in his cot, Gar rolled over and let out a tiny, hiccoughing snore.

"Doesn't it worry you?"

"Not especially. I'm an herbalist who helps prepare everyone's meals. One wrong seasoning, and the entire farm could spend a week in the outhouse."

That she could speak so casually of poisoning an entire farmhold — men and women she knew, children — just to incapacitate one templar… It horrified him. He could only stare at her in shock. He had seen traces of ruthlessness in how she dealt with Lloyd, and known it all for necessary, but this? How could he pretend that this was necessary?

"You would do that?" He found himself asking. His mouth had gone dry, and his voice came out cracked.

"If it came to it. I wouldn't relish the task." Her eyes narrowed for a moment, and then she pushed herself to sit up. She turned so that her upper body was facing him directly, long dark hair a fall of silken ink in the low red light of the fire, bronze skin aglow beneath the white shift. Her eyes were still narrowed, and he had to swallow a lump in his throat at the way she looked at him, intent and mask-like. "Cullen, I was a prisoner for eleven years. There is _nothing_ I would not do, to stay free. To keep Gar free. No task too demeaning or distasteful. Do you blame me for this?"

"No, of course not." Except... "Mostly not, I suppose. I don't know. It's rather a lot to take in, the idea that you sleep next to a woman who would not hesitate to poison innocent people."

"I wasn't planning to kill them," Sens said. She sounded a touch put out, as if he'd somehow insulted her. Perhaps he had. That she seemed to view his disquiet as an insult was a good sign, he supposed.

On the other hand, it was perhaps not a good sign that she needed his disapproval to realize that the course she planned was ill-thought, treading too close to malice.

"Forgive me, but thank the Maker for that," Cullen said, and he let his voice turn a touch dry. It startled her, he could see it in the way she jerked slightly back, her hair sliding back over her shoulders. Her eyes narrowed again before she forced them wider, forced her expression to turn blank once more. He pressed what little advantage he'd gained in this argument by adding, "Do you truly believe that some foodborne illness will carry no risk of death? Do you think Mari's babe could survive such a thing within her?"

But Sens only gave him a long look. "And what would you do, if it came to it? What is your plan to deal with him at need?"

"Dennet means to have us well away within the week. At need, we could go sooner."

"Would he not be suspicious of the pair of us departing so swiftly?"

"I'm sure Dennet could delay him," Cullen began, but Sens hadn't finished with him. Swift on the heels of her first words, swift on the sound of his last, she added, "Have you also decided where we would go?"

"Lothering," he said. He set his jaw; she was going to find some sort of fault with it. He could just tell. She was angry with him for hesitating at her plan, for flinching, for not being as heartless as she, as careless of the lives of others so long as the lives she cared about were preserved.

"Why not Gwaren?"

"Because to go anywhere in the south, a templar must pass through Lothering; it will be a place to rest his horse and buy supplies, not seek out apostates."

"A perfect place to hide, then." She was calculating something, and then he saw her dismiss it. "Very well. To reach Gwaren, would we need travel through the Brecilian Forest?"

"We would, yes," he agreed, and her expression shuttered closed. Whether she was thinking or not, whether she regretted their argument or not, whether she agreed with him or not, he could not begin to say. At this juncture, with the argument so close and a new awareness of each other lying between them, he wasn't sure he cared which it was.

"Then it is best," she said, at last, "that we avoid Gwaren."

"Weren't you Dalish?"

She touched two fingers to the deep brown thorns inked into her skin and said nothing of the matter. Instead, she reached out to him, trailing fingertips along his cheeks. Her mouth curved for just an instant as she touched upon his stubble, and then she rubbed her thumb along his cheek in a mirror of his earlier gesture.

He sat up, rising just enough to tilt his head and slant his mouth over hers.

Her quick, slim fingers tangled in his hair. This time, though, he was the one to control the kiss, the one to press his tongue between her parted lips. She was so warm against him, so sweet beneath him, that he wanted to crush her close, to stay pressed together this way, to be bound in her arms just as he wrapped her in his, until morn. No, until tomorrow noon.

He pulled away from her with a sigh, shifting where he lay.

* * *

The templar arrived two days later, on a bright morning, when Cullen was hauling firewood to the smoke house. Cullen almost didn't realize the man was arriving at the farm; he was too busy contending with bundles of logs, with soot on his forehead, and was turned entirely the wrong way in any event.

It was Seanna's shout that let him know there was even a newcomer on the farm, and when Cullen turned, he saw the armor, silver-white in the sun. The red kilt, the bright sash. The shield slung over his back. He wore no helm, and he led both his horse and his pack mule in a walk, slow and steady.

Cullen hated him almost instantly. It wasn't even a rational reaction, just the immediate response of a threatened animal. There was nothing cruel in the way the other templar stood, or looked at the people around him. He looked honest, open; his broad features were strangely boyish, perhaps made so by an upturned nose. And yet an honest templar was the last sort of man Cullen wanted to see.

"A newcomer," Cullen said, when his work carried him near enough. "Has Seanna yet welcomed you, stranger?"

"I thank you. I'm Brent of Highever, charged with finding a missing apprentice. There's some talk she may have been in Redcliffe."

Cullen looked to Seanna, who looked back at him. If she had the same idea about Sens and Cullen as her father, she gave no sign, and Cullen turned back to Ser Brent with a shrug. "I'm new to the farm myself, but I've neither met nor seen anyone strange here." He offered his hand. "Call me Cole."

It was an easy, instinctive gesture, something he'd done the day he'd introduced himself to the knights in the Tower. But as Ser Brent's gaze met his and held in a moment that could only have lasted a fraction of a second, Cullen realized his mistake. Before he could fix it, before he could pull his hand back, Ser Brent reached out and clasped him by the arm in a man-at-arms' greeting.

"Well met, Ser Cole," he said.

Cullen felt his ears warm up.

Seanna looked at him curiously, for perhaps the first time in the near-month he'd lived at the horse farm. She had always been more captivated with Sens and amusedly tolerant of Gar, with his serious nature and lack of interest in — more likely lacking knowledge of — children's games. Cullen had been largely dismissed, just another tow-headed Fereldan farm hand, this time with curlier hair and a more retiring personality. Now, though, he was interesting. Of course he was.

"You never told us you were a knight," Seanna said. She didn't sound accusing, exactly. Affronted, he supposed, as if in not inventing a more interesting past for himself he had paid her some personal insult.

"Because I wasn't," Cullen said. At Ser Brent's look — only a man who'd served among knights or other warriors would have made such a gesture — Cullen added, "I was one of Bann Loren's men-at-arms a time."

Bann Loren was well known for his inability to keep knights or soldiers of any real skill for longer than a season or so. He was little liked among either the new or the returning Fereldan nobility for his fickle, capricious nature. A bann he'd named friend and supported in one season could turn in his mind, within a smattering of weeks, to a bitter enemy, and it won him no support in the Landsmeet.

Seanna, evidently, knew none of this, because she screwed up her nose and asked, "But that's a good life, right? Why would you leave Bann Loren?"

"There were circumstances," Cullen said, affecting greater discomfort than he felt, though he was plenty uncomfortable at the scrutiny.

And here, Seanna nodded sagely, as if all the Maker's mysteries had been explained to her. "Sen," she said, but she shortened the 'e' in the name so much that it sounded as if she'd spoken of sin, and Ser Brent's eyebrows arched. Cullen sputtered a cough, feeling his face turn as red as if he'd been burned by the sun.

At last, he managed to wave an arm and say, to Ser Brent, "Shall I take you to Master Dennet? I'm sure the farm can put you up a night or two."

"It may be longer," the templar said. "My mare's come down lame. Pulled a stone from her hoof some seven days past and rested her, but the trip from Amaranthine to Kinloch Hold was a hard trip on it."

"Seanna, might you see to it?" Cullen asked it lightly, politely, but they both knew it wasn't a request. She should have offered it before. That he asked her now was both a courtesy to Ser Brent and a correction for her.

"Oh, yes, of course," she said, and while Cullen led Ser Brent away from the farm's entrance, she walked the horse to the stable.

Dennet listened to Ser Brent's explanation of who he was and why he was on the man's farm. His eyes were grave in his tanned, weathered face. He didn't look troubled, exactly; he didn't even give Cullen a significant look. But Cullen knew his employer well enough to know that the templar's presence made the man uneasy.

"This the chit who summoned some spirit and chided a man out of his last coin?" Dennet asked when Ser Brent mentioned seeking an apprentice.

Ser Brent heaved a sigh. "That's… Maker's breath, is that the story the innkeep's been spreading around? There was no summoning of demons in a bloody Redcliffe inn."

"I knew Lloyd was at stories again," Dennet said. Though neither his words nor his voice were smug, his satisfaction in not having believed a lie was clear. "Is she dangerous, this apprentice?"

"She's a mage," Ser Brent said stiffly, as if that explained everything. For a good templar — a better templar than he — Cullen supposed it might. But he went on to add, "Neither the Knight-Commander nor the First Enchanter believed her to be aggressive. She should be returned to the Tower for her own safety, to continue her training, but she likely means no harm." 

For her own safety. Cullen forced himself not to scoff. Was that what the knights errant believed? Was that what the best of the Circle believed, that they had imprisoned a woman such as her for her protection? The sudden vehemence of the thought surprised him.

Had he ever once considered Sens a prisoner before today? That she would have used the word to describe herself, he did not doubt, but he couldn't recall ever repeating it in his thoughts.

Dennet, who faced no such inner turmoil, merely nodded his response. "I'll have a look at your horse. Elaina and I have a spare room in the main house, and of course you'll join us all for dinner?"

"I would be pleased to," replied Ser Brent, perfectly amiable, perfectly polite, and Cullen all but ground his teeth. "I thank you for your generosity."

The corner of Dennet's mouth curved for a moment. Like Sens, that was as close as the man usually came to a smile, though his was more obvious and lasted longer.

Dinner was yet another excruciation. Cullen sat beside Sens, with Gar on her other side, and every so often he found himself evaluating Ser Brent yet again. The other templar's attention was much taken with fielding questions from Seanna, Ellar, and the other farm children.

But whenever there was a lull in the conversation, Ser Brent's eyes dipped to take in Sens. He was clearly studying her face, trying to figure out why an elven woman would be on a farm in Redcliffe. And yet he never seemed to reach any conclusion. Somebody else at the table distracted him, or Cullen pulled his attention away on purpose. The last thing Cullen needed was this man suspecting that Sens was an apostate and testing her in some fashion.

For one, considering Sens's recently revealed bloodthirsty nature, Cullen rather doubted Ser Brent would long survive the attempt.

For another, he didn't want to have to kill him. Cullen might have some sort of instinctive, prey animal dislike of him, but he could see that Ser Brent was not a bad man. No worse a man than Knight-Captain Hadley or Ser Bran, who had guarded the door to the Circle Tower. Even if Sens — by some Maker-granted miracle — managed to restrain herself from killing Ser Brent at the first hint of a threat to her freedom, Cullen would be forced to act.

Beside him, at one of the knight's long glances, Sens went still. She all but sagged against him, holding her breath for a moment that seemed to last too long. Cullen felt himself tense in readiness for a fight, clenching his jaw against the way his tongue would surely soon itch at the presence of mana.

And yet she called nothing to herself, flexed no magical might. She was simply an intractable, difficult woman made meek in the presence of a templar. She'd never been so demure in the Tower, and Cullen found himself ill at ease. Was she planning something, or was she simply paralyzed with fright?

"I don't think I caught your name," Brent said, and Cullen felt himself tense even further. He had been a fool to let her introduce herself as something so close to the name she'd worn in the Tower. And they daren't risk giving another answer now.

"My mother called me," Sens said, and then produced a tangle of elven sound that Cullen could not possibly have repeated if she'd said it three times and slowly. At their blank stares, and before Seanna could point out that Sens did not use that ridiculous, impossible mouthful, she went on to add, "Sen will do." There was a light in her gaze, a warmth hiding beneath the usual mellow tones of her voice, that made offering her shortname seem almost a flirtation.

Cullen felt his mood darken. She would, after all, do anything to stay free. But he didn't want to think of her offering a templar her body. Or of a mage-hunter accepting the offer. And Maker knew that Sens was ruthless enough that if he accepted her, there was no telling just what she would do to him. Odds were, if this flirtation went anywhere, they would be leaving the farm that very night.

He couldn't quite keep himself from shooting her a sharp look. Lucky for him, the rest of the farmhold would have expected it.

Looking slightly dazed at the idea that he might be expected to use the thing Sens was hopefully only pretending was a name, Brent said, "And does the… name… your mother gave you have some meaning? Related to one of your elven gods?"

"It means 'beloved and dutiful child,'" Sens said, and though her voice had been flirtatious before, now it was hushed, almost reverent. Her tone was at once a shock to the stomach and a slap to the face — her quiet, mournful tone could only mean that somewhere within that mess of sound truly was the name her mother had given her. He doubted greatly that the whole of it could be her name, but at least some of it was.

And she had shared it, not with him or Garahel, but as part and parcel of a lie, told to a man she feared.

"Mamae?" Gar asked, tilting his head to look at her. His eyes were very wide. "What does Garahel mean?"

"You know what it means," Sens replied, and there was an almost chiding tease in her voice. "You answer to it all the time. _Garas, ma halani._ "

Gar drooped his ears and his lips in a pout. "But Mamae, that just means 'come help me!' Why can't I have a name like yours or Papa's?"

"Oh, Cole doesn't mean anything special," Cullen said. He managed, if only barely, to dim his smile to a twitch in his cheek. "And if you had a name like your mother's, you wouldn't even know what to call yourself."

Unfortunately, that exchange drew Ser Brent's attention back to him. "The boy is yours?"

"Gar is mine, yes," Cullen said, just as steely as the first time he'd said it at this table, so near a month ago by now.

Ser Brent looked from Cullen — broad shouldered, round featured, human — to Garahel, who despite his round cheeks had high cheekbones and a delicate jaw, his eyes the same shape as Cullen's but as green as Sens's, and was clearly confused. Any child of mixed parents, Cullen knew, always turned out human, and Gar's golden curls did nothing to hide his overlarge ears. And yet it was undeniable that Gar looked like a mix of the two of them, their blood commingled.

As if grudgingly willing to allow an armed man to draw an explanation Cullen had seen no reason to give to Dennet or the farm, Cullen said, "He was born before I met Sen. But whoever sired him, I've reared him as my own."

Sens was a terrible influence. He shouldn't have been nearly so pleased at the fact that he had said absolutely nothing untrue.

It seemed that Dennet was just as uncomfortable with Brent's scrutiny as Cullen was, for toward the end of dinner, he cleared his throat. When everyone was looking his way, he said, "I've made my decision about Edwin."

Ellar tilted his head, clearly interested. Rickard, on the other hand, crossed his arms.

"I'll send Cole and Sen north at first light. Ellar, since the breach birth, I've need of you in the foaling barn at night."

"I won't complain," said Mari. "Maker knows I stand a better chance at getting sleep with him in the bunkhouse a time."

Rickard's wife loosed a merry but slightly cutting laugh. Cullen liked her no more than her husband, though thankfully, he saw her but rarely. It was Rickard who asked, "What, trouble in paradise? I suppose even the best of marriages must start to chafe after three children."

There was general snickering. Seanna and Gar, at least, looked blankly at the adults around them, while one of the other farm hands joined in the ribbing. Ellar was notorious among the hands for being a bit of a bully, if a well-intentioned one, and Cullen could scarce blame them for taking the chance to knock him down a peg. Ser Brent had at least the sense to know there was something here he had no part in, and was simply content to watch and eat.

After Cullen graciously thanked Dennet for the trust placed in him, the talk turned from plans for the farm's future to Ser Brent himself. It was hardly a surprise; the farm was as curious about him as it had been about Cullen and Sens. Nothing would do but that Ser Brent explain once and again why he was in Redcliffe arling, what had happened to his horse, what he sought.

An escaped apprentice was an exciting piece of news. For the people in and around Redcliffe, mages were simply the source of the strange colors sometimes seen in the night sky and the sometimes unnatural currents in Lake Calenhad, called the Kinloch by those whose families had lived there since the days before King Calenhad unified Ferelden.

"An apprentice? How are you meant to find him, anyway?" This from Rickard. "I don't expect you even know what he looks like."

"I know a mage when I meet one," was Ser Brent's steady reply. He spoke so mildly that Cullen almost didn't hear any threat in it. After a pause to scoop stew onto his trenchard, Ser Brent added, "And _she_ was described to me by the Knight-Commander."

This prompted curious, expectant looks from the table. Cullen felt himself joining in, though he dreaded to hear what Knight-Commander Greagoir had said.

Ser Brent recited, "An elven woman, small of stature, with pale eyes and dark hair. The Knight-Commander suspects she may have been in company with a red-headed knight. They would have passed this way some fortnight ago."

Cullen had to hold in a sigh of relief. Beside him, he felt Sens relax. The Knight-Commander hadn't mentioned Gar, and had concealed just when they left. He'd delayed as long as he could before alerting the Grand Cleric and the knights errant of an escaped apprentice.

Greagoir's goal, then, must have been to make of Sens and Gar somebody else's problem, rather than draining the Circle's resources to house a woman he thought might turn on the Tower at any time and a boy who had not yet adjusted.

* * *

After dinner, Cullen sent Sens and Gar ahead of him to the bunkhouse to get their things. They would leave before first light. In fact, it would be best if they left before moonrise, with only the stars to light their way south and east. Hopefully, Ser Brent wouldn't be expecting it. Hopefully, the combination of Sens's lie with Greagoir's would shield them.

But Ser Brent was waiting for Cullen outside the big house, just off one of the paths that led to the foaling barn. His armor gleamed dully in the low light. He raised an arm in greeting, just a wave of the hand. His gauntlets chimed faintly, the sound of metal moving, but the leather didn't creak.

"She's an apostate," Ser Brent said without preamble. When Cullen said nothing, Brent added, "I know you know."

Cullen still said nothing. Would that he'd kept his sword about him, but there was no call to wear it on a horse farm. He'd leaned it against the wall by the bed he shared with Sens, after giving Gar firm instructions never to try to play with it. He wore only a belt knife, and that had no hope of punching through a tempar's armor. He'd have to pierce Ser Brent's eye, or pray he could put the dagger through Brent's gorget and into his throat.

"She's beautiful, I'll give you that. I can see how she would turn a man's head, make him forget his duty and his vows. And I can see how you think it's well done, to follow her yourself, to watch over her. You think that because you can silence her spells at need she's made toothless and safe."

Cullen pressed his hand against the scrap of fabric that held his knife to his belt, tugging at it with thumb and forefinger. The knot unravelled silently and the hilt dropped into his palm.

"Go on," he said. "That's not all you think you know." If he could keep the man talking, distracted, he could lunge forward, get his hand over his mouth, and put the knifepoint through his eye, or under his ear.

A wiser man might have realized the danger he was in, might have seen that he was giving offense to someone with the same training who had few enough compunctions that he'd abandoned his vows. Seemingly abandoned his vows, Cullen reminded himself. He had taken an oath to protect the innocent, to seek no personal gain. Nowhere in the litany of promises had been one to follow orders, to keep prisoners, to stay at a specific posting.

But Brent seemed to think he was giving a young man a hard truth and a well-earned dressing down. For he kept on, undeterred: "You think that if she falls, if she's possessed, then you can do what's needful. You might even think it's best her death might come from a man who loves her. But _because_ you love her, you'll hesitate, and both you and the boy will die."

Cullen took a step forward, forcing himself to relax slightly. If he tensed up now, it'd only slow him from springing when he needed to. "What would you have me do, then?" 

"Leave her to the Chantry in Redcliffe and go back to whatever bannorn Chantry you left. Take the boy with you."

Cullen took another step forward. He shifted his grip on the knife, readying himself for the lunge he knew he'd have to make. "And if I don't?"

Brent moved in the darkness. It took Cullen a moment to realize the other templar was shaking his head. "Lad, it's naught to do with me. She's not the mage I seek, and I haven't the time to search out a wayward apprentice _and_ escort your woman to the Circle."

His head went light with a relief that ran in chilly tricklings down his back, washing his veins in cold. The man was at least reasonable, and thank the Maker for that. He felt his heartbeat slow.

And now the awkward business of returning his knife to his belt without being obvious about it, of backing away without seeming like he'd been ready to kill one of his own brethren. Cullen managed it, though barely and only thanks to the darkness.

"I'm content to watch over. I love our son. And in my heart," he admitted, "I cannot believe she will fall. She would never give the Chantry the satisfaction." The First Enchanter's words, and yet Cullen could not deny that they were true. 

Sens hated the Chantry and the Circle with such intensity, however little she allowed herself to be ruled by her feelings, that while she breathed, she would never yield to the temptations of a demon. Nor would she permit Gar to fall. She would raise him to understand his magic, to respect and value it, but not to rely on it, and not to trust the words of the creatures from beyond the Veil.

"You surely can't believe that a mage's fall satisfies a templar," Brent said, hollow. "I know you've never served in a Circle, but have you met no one who has?"

It took effort not to scoff, not to laugh incredulously. Brent knew no more whereof he spoke than Cullen understood the life of a templar errant. Certainly, no templar of the Circle relished encountering an abomination. They did not look forward to Harrowings, and they took no joy when the Harrowings failed and one of their number had to strike the killing blow. But every abomination was another piece of proof that the Circle was the best, the safest system. They were reassurances of the rightness of the cause. No Circle knight would ever deny that.

Cullen said, very quietly, "You don't know as much as you think you do. Go to the room Mistress Elaina prepared for you. Rest yourself for your hunt."

"You'll be gone by morning, won't you?"

"Dennet has been kind to us. We'll see his letter delivered, and may even return," Cullen replied, as if there was ever any letter.

* * *

By the time Cullen reached the bunkhouse, Sens had strapped Garahel to her back and wrapped him in her cloak. Their bags were neatly packed and closed off, all their straps buckled, and she'd pulled his armor from the chest where he'd hidden it. Cullen reached for his sword, hooking it through his baldric and slinging it over his shoulder, and then lifted their two packs in one hand. He'd have to chase down their mule, but he'd have needed to go and fetch it at some point.

As he passed by Sens, she reached out, laying one hand on his arm. He turned to face her and she stepped close to him, into his space, and then stood on the tips of her toes to brush a kiss against his cheek. The scent of her flowers filled his nose again, and for a moment, he was light-headed. It warmed his blood, made his pulse beat faster, but they had no time for it. He stepped away, resisting the urge to turn his cheek and kiss her on the mouth.

"We need to move and quickly," he said. "Brent suspects you as an apostate."

The shuttered expression Sens wore turned, if only briefly, to one of disquiet. But then she steeled herself and nodded her assent.

Dennet was waiting for them outside the foaling barn. He had the lead line of a pack pony in his hand, with two horses hitched at the nearest mounting block.

"Master Dennet," Sens said. Her voice was dazed, hollowed, rather than mellow and musical. "Is this…?"

"For the pair of you," Dennet said. "Whatever the two of you can manage seems a fair price, to me. Lad, you can put your armor and one of the saddlebags on the pony. Let your woman's horse carry the other bag."

"Thank you," Cullen said, and moved to affix the packs. He ducked back inside the bunkhouse for his armor, then lashed it to the pony. At the last, Sens handed him their coin purse.

"You'd know better than I what we can offer," she murmured. That low, soothing voice sent a shiver through him, and he was halfway surprised to find her yielding to his judgment. Then again, she had yielded to his judgment with Kester, and only intervened with Lloyd when he tried openly to cheat them.

And the money was mostly his, anyway. Cullen took the coinpurse from her, opening it and reaching within. His questing fingers soon found what they'd sought. He didn't have much by way of gold, but he could spare at least one gold coin and have enough left as savings in Lothering, and that wasn't counting his silver.

The one good thing about living on an island in a lake was that he'd had precious few places to spend his wage, and precious little he'd want to spend it on. Even tithing a portion of his earned coin to his family had left him with a goodly saving.

"Take this," Cullen said, pressing the coin into Dennet's hand. The gold shone in the light, and he saw Dennet's expression change. "It's as close to their worth as I can spare."

"Lad," Dennet said, but Cullen pushed the coin forward, into Dennet's hand.

Cullen helped Sens mount the mare, boosting her and watching as she arranged her skirts. He was glad, suddenly, that she wore more than one shift beneath her dress and thick stockings beneath the shifts, because he noticed that at some point she'd split the front and back seams on her dress up to her knees. He had a sudden wisp of hope that Sens would at least understand the basics of riding.

Sens almost sounded sad when she looked down and said, "Fare you well, Dennet."

"And you," Dennet replied.

Cullen reached out, clasping Dennet by the arm. The horsemaster returned the grip, firm. "Thank you for all you've done for us," Cullen said.

Dennet only shook his head, wry and for once awkward. "You've too far to go to be standing about talking, I expect. Best you be off now."

"Fare you well, Master Dennett. Maker turn his gaze on you," Cullen said as he mounted up, swinging easily into the saddle.

Dennet nodded, then gave them a brief wave. He didn't watch them go; he turned and walked back toward the big house. Cullen turned his head to watch it grow small behind them as they left.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [waves over deeper waters](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3765706) by [nagia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia)




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